


Half Way Across

by DracoMaleficium



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Killing Joke (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Basically it's Joker Angst so Proceed Carefully, Batman: The Killing Joke, Canon-Typical Ableism, Canon-Typical Violence, Characters Being Assholes, Dubious Morality, Emotional Baggage, Fix-It, M/M, Medication, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Post-Killing Joke, Rehabilitation, Slow Burn, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-15 18:28:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 237,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5795281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DracoMaleficium/pseuds/DracoMaleficium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set immediately after "The Killing Joke": Joker changes his mind on the way back to Arkham and agrees to Batman's offer to rehabilitate him. </p><p>What follows is a mess of conflicting needs, emotional ugliness and a whole lot of bad decisions, but no one ever said it was going to be easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so, I've been working on this one for a while and currently this fic is at over 27k. I was initially going to post it all at once and in one piece, but it's growing into a monster (predictably) and I've discovered that I actually need some feedback and encouragement to make that last stretch towards the end, so I've decided to post the first and the second part early to see what you think. Part 2 will probably be uploaded later tonight or tomorrow, after I edit it. 
> 
> Now, I've tried to put the most important things about the story into the tags, but please pay particular attention to the warnings about emotional ugliness and canon-typical ableism. Attitudes to mental illness in the Batman canon can be extremely upsetting and I've tried to avoid it as much as I can, but some of it is still going to be reflected in the text so proceed carefully. The main characters in the fic are Not Okay, neither of them, and the story draws heavily on their respective issues. 
> 
> I _hope_ the characters are kept IC most of the time, but there may be questionable moments due to the very nature of the story so I hope you make allowances. Joker especially is going to be behaving in a different manner because of all the medication he's agreed to take. My approach to DC canon is basically to cherry-pick the things I like and work around the things I don't like and this is going to be reflected in the story. This also goes for the timeline - Jason was still alive when TKJ was published so I'm going to stick to it, but in general the timeline here is pretty loose to accommodate the necessary technology (and so I could sneak Dr. Quinzel in here. Because Dr. Quinzel is awesome and deserves better.)
> 
> The fic is littered with references not just to TKJ but to other Joker-centric comics and will include quotes from them. I'm considering doing an annotated version so if anyone's interested that is definitely an option.
> 
> And finally, many thanks to [Agaricals](http://agaricals.tumblr.com) and [Jerk-bending](http://jerk-bending.tumblr.com) for their tireless support, and to [Yenneffer](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yenneffer/pseuds/Yenneffer) for Robin-related consultations! You're the best.
> 
> Feedback much appreciated!

“You will visit me,” Joker says.

The words splash into the silence like pebbles into a puddle, rippling air which up until now has been oppressively still. Bruce manages not to react but the muscles in his body tense all the same; he suspects they always will at the sound of the Joker’s voice.

Especially after tonight. 

“What?” he says, keeping his eyes on the road. 

“In Arkham. I want you to visit me regularly, at least once a week. If we’re gonna do this I want you to keep your end of the deal.”

Bruce’s thoughts grind to a screeching halt; suddenly his skin bleeds hot sweat under the kevlar. His heart slams in his neck. He tries to fit this new development into what happened not an hour ago at the funfair and the concept is suddenly too big, too _impossible_ to settle in his head, a bit like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that he’s trying to forcefully jam into the wrong part of the picture.

He almost doesn’t dare ask, in case it’s just another joke. But he can’t afford to hope either. 

“So you’re saying —”

“Yes,” Joker says. Quietly, like he hates himself for it, like he thinks he’s making a big mistake but is unable to stop himself all the same, like he’s already regretting even this much. “Yes, I’ll do it. Okay? I’ll — I’ll try. With you. But you have to promise you’ll visit.”

Bruce is silent. The puzzle piece still doesn’t want to fit, not after everything that’s happened, and he thinks he may have been a fool to ever think it would. 

Only now, despite everything he’s said back there at the fair, Joker’s promising to try and _make_ it fit. The implications of that are just too momentous for Bruce to consider. 

“All right,” he makes himself say, and thinks, _Oh, God._

And then he thinks, _Jim. Barbara._

_I’m sorry._

But it’s worth it. Just taking that step, even knowing it may well amount to nothing… it’s worth it, and if Joker wants to _try_ , even now, maybe one day Bruce will find the words to explain why it matters so much, and maybe, one day, the Gordons will learn not to hate him. 

Joker is quiet in the passenger seat, cuffed and bound, gazing out the window at the splashes of red and blue of the police car lights trailing after them. Rain rattles against the panes and smudges the lights into a mess of bright color. Joker’s hair drips water onto the seat, onto the muddied suit, down the hollows of his white face and the corners of his downturned mouth. He looks broken, his vivid colors washed away into pale shadows against the flashes of red and blue. Bruce looks away and back to the road.

“Don’t turn the flashlight off on me, Bats,” Joker says quietly, much, much later, when the black spires of Arkham sharpen against the sky.

Bruce feels the muscles in his jaw tense. His fingers tighten on the wheel.

“I won’t.”

 

***

 

Bruce keeps his word and visits the Joker once a week. 

Nothing about it is easy. The first time he comes, Joker refuses to speak to him, and they spend fifteen minutes staring at one another as Bruce tries and fails to get him to confess why he’s agreed to this in the first place.

The second time he comes, Joker is singing. It’s a love song. He stares right at Bruce as he sings it, and his lips are fixed into a grin that feels just an inch too stretched, even for him. He refuses to stop. Bruce leaves after three minutes.

The third time he comes, he brings cards. It seems to work; Joker sits down to a game willingly enough. They play in silence until about ten minutes in, when Joker asks, “And how is the lovely miss Gordon doing these days? I imagine the surgery must have cost an arm and a leg. Or two legs, as the case may be.”

Bruce shoves his chair back, hard, snatches the cards away and slams the door. Joker laughs him out. He sounds as angry as Bruce feels.

It’s the anger that keeps Bruce coming back, even more than the promise. When he catches glimpses of anger under Joker’s theatrics, hope beats against his chest, however tiny, that maybe this _could_ work after all, because what the anger _is_ is Joker lashing out. Joker resents Batman for making him agree to give up what makes him _him_. He’s hurting, and he wants to hurt Bruce right back for it, but he’s hurting because,at least for now, he’s _keeping his word_. 

And Bruce can take the anger. He’s prepared for it. This was never going to be easy.

It could still be nothing more than another game, and Bruce takes that into account every time he strides through the cold corridors of Arkham. He knows the risks. Knows who he’s dealing with. He’s careful and doesn’t give Joker any more openings than he absolutely has to, and wonders, every time, if - providing it really isn’t a game - today is going to be the day Joker gives up for good and throws the deal back in Bruce’s face.

Sometimes, in the small hours when the night begins to drain away from the sky, Bruce wonders if he’s not subconsciously hoping for it. 

In a way, it would be easier.

Even so, he keeps coming back, and he brings the cards with him, and sometimes they even manage to finish a game without Bruce storming out in the middle. 

“You expect me to crack,” Joker says one evening, about two months into this new shaky arrangement. He’s looking into his cards and not at Bruce, pointedly so; his voice tries to be light but there’s steel underneath it.

Bruce sees no point in lying. He says, “Yes.”

Joker’s mouth curls into a smirk. He lays his cards down on the table. It’s a winning hand. 

“Good thing I excel at doing the unexpected,” he says. 

Bruce gathers up the cards and leaves.

He doesn’t wait a whole week before visiting again. Joker isn’t the only one here with something to prove.

 

***

 

The doctors at Arkham don’t like it. They say it’s hopeless; they say there’s no evidence of Joker’s genuine desire to reform other than no one getting hurt since the last escape; they try to talk him out of it. So does Alfred. Barbara doesn’t answer his calls and Jim hasn’t turned on the Bat signal in over three months, even though he’s refused to take time off to recover properly and look after his daughter. 

Bruce doesn’t blame any of them, and he doesn’t try to talk to Jim on his own. The words of explanation aren’t quite here yet. They both need time.

And meanwhile, he keeps visiting, twice a week now if he can spare the time, never twice on the same day. He brings cards with him, and has started to bring candy too, after a visit happens to go particularly well.

“Trying to condition me, Batsy?” Joker asks, sly and delighted, popping an expensive chocolate truffle into his mouth. 

Bruce watches him. “Maybe.”

“Excellent. I want lemon ganache next time. Hate cherry. Belgian milk will do, too.”

Bruce lets him swallow the truffle and reach for another. He asks, “I can convince Arkham to resume your therapy. Do you want me to?”

Joker pauses. The truffle is arrested halfway to his mouth, staining white fingers brown. He searches Bruce’s face. 

“Will you keep visiting?”

“Yes.”

“Then I couldn’t care less what they do. Go ahead and parade a whole host of lab coats through here if you think it’ll work, as long as I get to see your lovely face.”

Bruce ignores the baiting, like he always does, but as soon as he leaves he heads straight for Arkham’s office. 

Predictably, the doctor isn’t happy.

“We’ve tried all forms of therapy before,” he murmurs, pressing hands to his forehead as though to ward off a headache. “What makes you so sure it’ll work this time?”

“I’ll be personally involved.”

Arkham snorts. “Sure, be my guest. We’ve already broken every rule in the book letting you have free roam of the place, might as well make you an honorary doctor and be done with it. Do you want a pair of glasses to make it official? A clipboard? A white coat?”

Bruce keeps his face still. “I don’t do white.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He eyes Bruce resentfully, vein in his forehead throbbing. “You’re taking too many chances and putting this whole city at risk in the process. Even you can’t guarantee results.”

“I can’t,” Bruce agrees quietly. “All I have is a gut feeling.”

“And what’s your gut feeling telling you?” 

Bruce’s fingers curl into fists. “It’ll work.”

He can’t explain it to Arkham any more than he can explain it to anyone else. And he still could be wrong. But he doesn’t think he is, not this time, not with the signs he’s been reading in Joker’s body if not in his words. 

It’ll work.

 

***

 

Joker escapes five months into his renewed therapy. Bruce finds him just outside the Asylum gates, sitting on the grass, his jumpsuit caked with mud. Joker giggles when he sees Bruce melt out of the shadows, but the sound is quiet, and he doesn’t move to stand up.

“Hello, darling,” he says.

“I’m taking you back in.”

“Okay.”

Bruce takes a step closer. Joker watches him, and if anything, he looks tired. 

“Just keeping you on your toes, Bats,” he says when Bruce eventually offers a hand to help him up. “Can’t have you growing too complacent, now can we?” He giggles at that, too, and this time it sounds bitter. “’Sides, they amped up security. They can’t give me a new challenge and then expect me not to take it.”

“How many have you hurt?” Bruce asks.

Joker shrugs and lets Bruce push him out of the tree cover and onto the road. “Maybe three. None of them will die and with any luck there won’t even be any scarring. Consider it a gift, from me to you.”

Bruce’s fingers curl over one bony shoulder, hard enough to bruise. “If you’re not going to take this seriously —”

Joker looks at him. The smile is still there, but his eyes are hollow, cold. “You think I don’t?” he whispers. “You think I’d be sitting out here in the cold waiting for you to pick me up if I didn’t? I could have better things to do than rot here drugged half to death and bored out of my mind the rest of the way. I could be organizing parties. Visiting friends. Dancing…” The smile stretches. Bruce pushes him on and thinks of Barbara, weeping in the hospital bed. 

“We’re not dancing,” he tells Joker.

Joker sighs. “Not anymore.”

Bruce chooses not to answer. He moves his grip from Joker’s shoulder to his arm. “Come on.”

“There’s more than one kind of dance, you know, Batsy,” Joker whispers when Bruce waits with him at the gates. His voice is laced with hope. He needs something to replace what he’d agreed to lose, and Bruce can’t quite stop himself saying, “Yes.”

There _are_ other kinds of dances. And he can’t help but feel that he’s just agreed to take Joker’s hand, all over again.

Only this time Joker doesn’t know the steps. He’s asking Bruce to _lead_. And Bruce isn’t all that sure he knows the steps either, but they both know he’s gonna do his damnest to figure it out, and maybe that’s good enough for now.

 

***

 

Bruce invests more money into Arkham, anonymously at first and then as an overblown publicity stunt. They’re developing new drugs for Joker, and he makes a point of getting personally involved in the research process as Batman. Trial and error, trial and error, brainstorming even as he perches on rooftops, sitting up with Arkham’s finest doctors in the fumed-up labs until the sky outside turns pink. Finally they manage to come up with a starting dosage of anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, tranquilizers, suppressants and mood stabilizers, and Bruce stands by to watch as Joker takes them for the first time. 

The new meds mean the visits become even more erratic. Uglier. Jokes is still able to focus on him but doesn’t seem to be there half the time, and when he is, he’s either silent or pretending to rave, trying just hard enough for Bruce to see through the act, probably to coax guilt out onto Bruce’s face.

Bruce doesn’t play into his hand. He watches, and supervises, and though they only play perhaps half the time these days he still brings the cards, and the sweets sometimes, too. He takes the time to thoroughly screen every single doctor coming into contact with Joker. And when he thinks Joker’s lucid enough, he asks questions he knows won’t be answered. 

In the meantime, he tries to put a stop to the electroshocks. They fight him on it. It’s integral to the treatment, they claim, and he has no legal authority to refute that. He’s already meddling too much, interfering, overstepping, and Dr. Arkham threatens to cut the visits entirely if he doesn’t relent. “We’re risking a lot just letting you in,” he says. “If word gets out you’re involved with the meds, they’d shut this place down faster than you can say ‘bat’. I won’t have you telling me and my staff how to do our jobs.”

“The meds are working,” Bruce reminds him.

“We don’t know that yet. It’s still too early to tell.” 

Only Bruce knows they are. He can see it. The Joker laughs less, and he’s calmer, his eyes less manic, the muscles of his face more relaxed. His fingers aren’t twitching as much. His smiles no longer stretch unnaturally wide, most of the time, and his edges seem softer, his voice quieter. Those changes are small, and Bruce can only look for them when the medication doesn’t make Joker zone out or lose it altogether, which it still does, with the doses being constantly readjusted. But they’re there. For the first time, the treatment is having an _effect_ , and hope struggles to shine through the cracks around the door of Bruce’s self-control no matter how hard he tries to shut it out. 

Then the Joker escapes again, and this time he fights, nails slashing and teeth biting and “No no no please no” and “I want to go back to how we were” and “I don’t like this dance” and “Just let me go.” They find a week’s worth of undigested pills hidden in the cracks in the floor under his bed. He screams when Bruce manhandles him back into the cell, wordless cries that ring in Bruce’s ears long after he leaves, and they have to sedate him to inject the meds into him by force. 

There are no more incidents after that. 

Still, it’s what finally drives Bruce to act on a thought that has been building and building ever since Joker’s first escape, and when he returns to the cave that night, he shares the plan with Alfred.

“This is very stupid,” Alfred says after a long, long spell of silence, “and very brave. Which should be the title of your biography, Sir, should you ever feel the need to authorize one.”

He’s shaken, Bruce can tell. His heart aches. But he’s determined now, and his mind is made up.

“We can make this work,” he says. “I’ll make sure of that. I won’t let him hurt you.”

“And what about Master Jason?”

Bruce grits his teeth. “For now, he’s with Dick and the Titans. I will inform him of the plan… in due course.”

“You mean you intend to hide this from him until all is settled.” Alfred’s voice gains a sharp edge of disapproval.

Bruce looks away. “He wouldn’t understand. It’s for the best, Alfred. He’d fight me on it —”

“Perhaps with good reason.”

“— and I just _know_ it’ll help. Think about all the lives we’ll save if this works.”

“That is still a pretty big _if_ , Sir,” Alfred points out. “Don’t you think Master Jason should have a say in what goes on in his own house?”

He’s right, of course. He always is. “It’s my call. I’m making it,” Bruce says anyway, because while his heart hurts for Jason, he knows his duty, and his gut is telling him that this is it. 

Alfred sighs. He isn’t quite meeting Bruce’s eyes. “There’s no talking you out of it, is there?”

“No.”

“I see.” Alfred’s shoulders don’t slump, exactly, but they do drop an inch or so, and Bruce has to swallow over the spike of remorse that, once upon a time, might have made him reconsider. 

“He won’t hurt you,” he repeats.

Alfred looks at him. “It’s not myself I’m worried about.”

Bruce pretends he doesn’t know what he means. 

 

***

 

Jim Gordon is standing by the lit Bat signal, smoking. Bruce waits until he finishes his cigarette before jumping onto the roof, right where Jim can see. This is important.

“Jim,” he says quietly.

Jim regards him quietly, foot driving the remains of the cigarette stub into the roof. 

“I had an interesting conversation with Wayne the other day,” he says.

Bruce nods. “Yes.”

“He said it was your idea.”

“It was.”

“I don’t have to tell you I hate it.”

“No.” 

Jim looks into the slits of the mask and Bruce looks right back. It lasts maybe a minute. Then Jim sighs and turns his back on him.

“I hear you’ve been visiting him,” he says quietly, looking out over Gotham’s skyline, and though he’s trying to hide it, Bruce can still detect the bitter edge to his voice. “Some new sort of therapy, they say. And he’s playing along. So, what, you think this plan of yours, that it’s the next step?”

“I do,” Bruce says, sincerely. 

“And what if you’re wrong and he ends up killing Wayne and escaping?”

“I’ll make sure it won’t happen. I’m working on adequate precautions.”

“He’s done the impossible before.”

“Yes,” Bruce admits, “but that was before. Like you said, he’s cooperating now.”

“And how long do you think that’ll last?”

Bruce says nothing. There’s no promises to be made here, and they both know it. He waits.

“I don’t have men to spare,” Jim says eventually. “We’re stretched thin as it is. Wayne is going to have to shell out on his own security guards to make up for the shortage.”

“That can be arranged.”

“I want access to security tapes — I’m assuming you’re gonna install surveillance?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I want to be consulted on security measures, too. This is still going to be a prison.”

Bruce nods. “Of course.”

“Okay, I gotta ask,” Jim says, turning back to him, “how does Wayne expect to keep it under wraps? It’s gonna leak. No way it won’t. And then he’s going to have the whole city on his doorstep, with pitchforks and flaming torches.”

Bruce has considered that. He says, “I have ways of ensuring it won’t leak, at least for a while.” 

Jim turns to look at him. He doesn’t seem convinced. “You gonna try and personally intimidate every single Arkham employee and journalist in this town?”

“If I have to.”

“I can’t believe we’re even considering this,” Jim mumbles, and his fingers twitch like he’s yearning for another smoke. “This is sick. He’s sick. And I’m sick just thinking about this.”

Bruce’s throat feels cold, dry. “I know how difficult this must be for you —”

“Do you?” Jim looks straight at him, and his eyes are the coldest Bruce has ever seen them.

He waits a beat, and then continues: “But I’m trying to make a difference. So what happened to you… and Barbara… won’t happen to anyone else.”

Jim tenses. His hand hides in the pocket of his coat, and Bruce knows he’s fingering his gun. 

He stands still and watches, Gotham carrying on below.

“It’s on you,” Jim says eventually. “Whatever he does? It’s on you.”

Bruce nods. He’s accepted that from the start.

 

***

 

Two months later, the gates of the Wayne Estate open at four in the morning to admit a single black van, unmarked and with an ordinary license plate. Bruce as Batman waits for the van to park by the East Wing. 

“Where’s Wayne?” Arkham asks, getting out of the van.

“He preferred to spend the night elsewhere. He’d rather not be here to see the patient.” 

“So the man does have _some_ sense,” Arkham mutters. Bruce’s jaw clenches.

“It was my idea,” he says, “I talked it over with Wayne. I should be the one to introduce the Joker to his new home.”

Arkham shrugs, and so do the police officers he’s brought with him. The doctors frown. One of them, a slight blond woman who looks no older than twenty, confesses she’s been hoping to talk to Mr. Wayne about visiting hours and possibilities for continuing therapy. Bruce promises her she’ll be able to schedule an appointment. She looks appeased, but still apprehensive, and clutches her clipboard tight to her chest as they finally decide to wheel out the patient.

Joker is sedated and looks to be asleep, or maybe unconscious. They still felt the need to put him in a straight-jacket and chain his feet. Bruce doesn’t comment and silently leads them all into the manor by the side staff entrance, taking over to push Joker’s wheelchair himself.

On the third floor, he quietly explains the extensive security measures installed in the furthest closed-off section. To all intents and purposes the third floor of the East Wing is now a fortress. It doesn’t look like one, though, wires and lasers and surveillance cameras camouflaged behind bright colors and comfortable furniture. Joker gets three rooms to himself: a bedroom with a bathroom attached, a parlor and a gym. The windows in all three are bulletproof glass, big and wide to admit plenty of sunlight, and look out into the gardens with Gotham’s sharp skyline still looming in the distance because Bruce knows Joker needs the comfort of that sight as much as he does. The rooms are spacious and bright, fully furnished, with a small library complete with a writing desk and a wardrobe filled with new clothes custom-made to fit according to Bruce’s instructions. A dumbwaiter has been installed so Alfred won’t have to come anywhere near here, with the lift and the chute both much too small for Joker to fit into them (and even so, there are alarms in place to prevent any such attempts).

“This is all very… generous,” Dr. Arkham admits grudgingly as he surveys the rooms. “I wish Wayne were here so I could discuss the details with him personally.”

“He said he will come to your office tomorrow,” Bruce promises. 

“Hmmmm.” Arkham runs a hand across the lacquered wood of the writing desk, then drums his fingers against it, frowning. “This is so much more than the bastard deserves.”

In the chair, Joker sits quiet and still, head bent like it’s been since they brought him out of the van. Bruce says nothing.

“It’s still a prison,” the young blond doctor observes. She is frowning too, her eyes flitting to the Joker and Bruce like she’s fighting the urge to insert herself between them.

Bruce thinks he might have to keep an eye on that one.

“It is,” he agrees. “I helped design the security systems. Wayne is aware of the risks.”

“And yet he still invited the scumbag into his home,” Arkham murmurs. 

Bruce says nothing.

“Let me take over from here,” Alfred says from the doorway, soft-footed as ever. “I will show you the control room and we will discuss the details of the guard rota while our… guest settles in. This way.”

“I don’t think we should leave the two of them alone,” the young doctor protests.

Arkham rolls his eyes and grabs her by the hand. “Come on, Batman’s a big boy. I’m sure he can handle a drugged man in a straight-jacket.”

She pulls her hand away. “That’s not what I —”

“Dr. Quinzel,” Arkham barks. “We’re leaving.”

She grits her teeth. Her eyes, when she looks at Bruce, are hard with warning, and he is almost touched that someone should feel so protective of Joker. 

Almost. She is so _young_ , and Joker has a way of getting to people. He’ll have to have a talk with Arkham about that.

Alfred escorts the group of doctors and police officers out, giving Bruce a long look as he does. The doors click shut. The reinforced metal wall slides into place with a hollow bang of finality. Soon all the systems will go online and…

And it’ll be done. There will be no going back. 

Not that Bruce was ever going to.

“They’re all gone,” he says quietly after a moment. “The cameras won’t go online for another fifteen minutes. You can stop pretending now.”

“Nice place you got here, Bats,” Joker whispers. His voice scratches out of his throat with effort, and he only lifts his head a few inches. His eyes, when he pries them open, look muddy, unfocused. The pupils still zero in on Bruce as he moves to stand in front of the wheelchair, and the corner of Joker’s unpainted lips tugs up. 

Bruce keeps his face blank. “It’s not my —”

“Oh all right, your day mask’s then. Come on, Batsy, I think we can drop the act at this point. You’ve invited me to move in with you. It’s a new dance, remember?”

Bruce searches his face, considering. He’s had his suspicions, but…

“If it’s a new dance,” he says eventually, “and you think you know my name, why not give me yours?”

“You know my name.”

“The real one.”

“My name _is_ the real one, Bats. Just like yours is. You know how it works.”

Bruce doesn’t want to argue. He isn’t sure he can. Instead he points out, “Even so, I still have a different name to retreat to when the night is over.”

“Hey, whatever floats your bat-boat. Personally I never saw the appeal.”

“You will eventually, if we’re still doing this. The goal is to get you back out there. You’re going to need a name.”

Joker lets out a sound that’s not a sigh and yet not quite a giggle either. “Let’s cross that bridge if we get there, shall we?”

Bruce takes note of the _if_ , and he knows Joker knows that he does. He keeps his face still. 

“All right. What do you want me to call you in the meantime?”

“Just keep using my name. It shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

They hold each other’s eyes for a minute exactly. Then Joker blinks, like keeping his eyes open is a challenge, chin dropping onto his chest. Either he’s about to pass out or he’s faking it. Bruce decides it’s probably time to face the inevitable.

“I’m going to carry you to the bed,” he says loudly to focus Joker’s attention back on himself. “Then I’ll release you from the straight-jacket. You’ll have free roam of the rooms here and the balcony, provided you don’t try to break out into the other parts of the house. Can you —” Bruce walks up to the wheelchair. “Joker. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, yes, sweetie darling,” Joker mutters, a smile in his voice pushing through the drug haze. “Go ahead an’ suh, sweep me off my feet.”

The less alert part of Bruce wants to roll his eyes. He suppresses it because even now, the man in front of him is dangerous, and he’s about to get way too close. To distract himself, or maybe both of them, Bruce starts talking as he bends to slide his arms around Joker. “There will be security guards in the control room watching you. The cameras have no blind spots. The walls and widows are reinforced. You are not allowed to handle chemicals or sharp objects, and nothing that can be made into a weapon.”

“You smell nice,” Joker observes sleepily. 

Bruce locks his muscles into place and pulls Joker up into his arms. “You don’t,” he murmurs.

Joker giggles and lets his head roll onto Bruce’s shoulder. 

“You’ll be given three meals a day. You can address the cameras and ask for more if you’re hungry. Someone will let the staff know. In time, if you behave, we can work out a way for you to go out into the gardens, but for now you’ll be confined to the balcony. It has a force field around it so you can’t jump out. There are alarms in place to prevent your leaving your quarters in any way. I have precautions to knock you out if you decide to make trouble. There are books in the parlor. The TV will only be used for video therapy sessions, but if we decide you’re responding to the treatment we might reconsider.”

Joker’s curling hair tickles the exposed skin around Bruce’s mouth. It’s soft, softer than anything permanently altered by chemicals has any right to be, and it smells of sterile hospital soap, like it’s been freshly washed. The straight-jacket reeks of old sweat and mothballs, and Joker’s body feels light, frail, wiry under Bruce’s fingers. The chains seem to be responsible for most of the weight. He’s mostly limp as Bruce carries him over to the bedroom, but he does try to press closer to Bruce’s chest, and Bruce doesn’t quite manage to ignore it. 

“Your treatment will continue,” he says. “Like I said, your sessions will be conducted through video. There is a timer installed that will remind you to take your medication at regulated times.”

“And if I don’t?” Joker asks as Bruce lowers him onto the bed. 

“If you don’t, we will know,” Bruce says sternly, “and the medication will be administered intravenously.”

“How exciting. Will you be the one manhandling me?” Joker’s smile is almost eager. 

“Maybe. But you’ll be unconscious for it anyway so it’ll be better for all involved if you don’t try to find out.”

“Killjoy.” 

“You’ve agreed to this,” Bruce reminds him. “That’s the only reason you’re here. I know you can probably bypass most of my security measures given enough time and I’m ready for it. But you’re here by choice, and I’m not going to go back on our deal as long as you don’t. But I want you to know this.” Bruce leans closer, making sure Joker’s eyes stay on him. “The moment you try anything… the moment I decide you’re back to your old tricks… the moment you make anyone under my roof fear for their safety… You’re back to Arkham. The deal is off. No more visits, no more coddling, no more… dancing. Do you understand?”

Joker keeps his eyes on him. His smile, although tired, settles into something mocking, something cruel. Still, he nods, then turns onto his side to look out the window where dawn is spilling vivid pinks and oranges all over the sky. 

“It’s about trust,” Bruce says, watching the play of sunlight on Joker’s gaunt face. “You’re here to get better and to prove to me you actually want to. This new arrangement is supposed to make it easier for you. If you’re serious about making an effort, you won’t throw this chance away.”

“Here comes the sunnnnnn, doo doo doo doo… here comes the sun,” Joker sings softly. “And I say, it’s all right… it’s all right.”

Bruce waits a beat. He turns to look at the sunrise, then back to Joker.

“I’m going to release you of the straight-jacket now,” he says.

“Little Batsy, it’s been a cold lonely winter,” Joker hums. “Little Batsy, it feels like years since it’s been here.”

Bruce bends over him to carefully undo the restraints. Joker keeps humming, voice going softer and softer, even after Bruce is done and his arms and feet are free.

“Trust,” Bruce repeats. “Remember that.”

“Little Batsy, I feel that ice is slowly melting. Little Batsy, it seems like years since it’s been clear…”

“I’ll be back tonight.” 

“Here comes the sun, doo doo doo doo.”

Bruce watches him for a moment longer, until Joker’s voice drains away entirely and his eyes fall shut. His breath, now unrestrained, evens out. 

That’s when Bruce clasps the tracker bracelet over Joker’s wrist and locks it. Only then does he turn to leave.

Trust only goes so far.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the promised part 2! Once again shorter than intended because I just didn't have the heart to drop the remaining 20k on you all at once, but hey, that means you'll get part 3 sooner so that's good, right?
> 
> This one is a bit more violent and includes a panic attack scene on top of all the other ugliness.

Alfred is sitting at the computer in the cave, watching the camera feeds from Joker’s rooms. He doesn’t turn when Bruce walks up to him and stands beside the chair, a curious role reversal that at any other time might have made him smile. 

“What is he doing?” he asks, reaching for the plate of canapes Alfred brought down.

“Preening.”

“Preening?”

“Yes.” Alfred points to one of the monitors and Bruce’s eyes follow. The feed shows Joker in his bedroom examining himself critically in the mirror, one of the suits Bruce has ordered for him adorning his thin, spindly frame. It fits perfectly. Bruce doesn’t want to even begin to examine how he feels at the knowledge that he’s estimated Joker’s measurements this accurately. 

“How long has he been at it?” he asks, swallowing the discomfort with the canape and washing it down with water for good measure. 

“It’s been an hour since I came down here, Master Bruce. This is the third suit I have had the misfortune of seeing him try on.”

Bruce fights the urge to smirk. “And yet you’re still here,” he points out.

“Indeed. It’s rather like watching a plane crash, Sir. One just cannot look away.”

On the screen, Joker poses in front of the mirror, one of the showy, ridiculous poses he could well be striking in the middle of one of his more theatrical “performances.” Hip thrust out, hands the air, long fingers stretched out like a dancer’s. Then he moves into another pose, and another, testing the fabric, watching it stretch and yield. 

Bruce has to agree with Alfred’s assessment — it really is impossible to look away.

“He looks better,” he observes quietly. “The drugs wore off?”

“I was told by the lovely Dr. Quinzel that he would wake up sometime around noon. It seems that her estimate was accurate. Incidentally, she insists on a meeting.”

“I’ll call Arkham in the evening,” Bruce promises. His eyes track Joker around the room.

Alfred clears his throat. “Master Bruce, I did my best not to question your decisions regarding this matter,” he says, moving to stand up. “I understand that this is an important project for you and you need to do this your way.”

Bruce’s throat clenches. He nods. “I appreciate it, Alfred.”

Alfred makes way for him, and Bruce takes his seat in front of the computer. 

“Even so, I must wonder, Sir… is it wise to indulge him like that?”

“I’m not indulging him.”

“The clothes you have provided for him are all in his preferred colors.”

“I saw no harm in that,” Bruce says. Joker is now trying to finger-comb his hair, with little success.

“And the doctors, Master Bruce? What did they have to say on the subject of encouraging his… peculiarities?”

Bruce sighs, letting his head fall back against the headrest. His eyes follow Joker as he begins to waltz around the room, humming, _One two three, one two three_. “We’re trying things differently this time,” he says. “Arkham hasn’t been able to beat, drug or shock the clown out of him. Maybe that’s not the way. Maybe the clown himself isn’t the problem.”

“And you think you can keep the clown, but drive out the sadistic murderer?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce confesses. “That’s the point of all this. To find out. Arkham wasn’t about to trigger anything new in him — he’d been there for too long. He knows all of their methods inside and out. But this? It’s all new.”

“For him _and_ for you, I’d wager,” Alfred mutters.

Bruce keeps his eyes on the monitors and pretends he didn’t hear that. Joker keeps humming, whirling around the room with surprising grace, and then it finally strikes Bruce with full force.

 _He’s in my home. He’s in my_ home.

Coldness clutches at his chest and squeezes, much too tight. He presses his eyes closed for a moment and breathes out. It was a mistake, he thinks, it was all a mistake, it can never work. But it has to. He has to make it work. There really is no going back now.

“What do you think, Alfred?” he asks.

“Well, he’s no Bette Middler,” Alfred judges. “His pitch needs some work.”

“No, I mean…” Bruce lets out a long sigh, trying not to imagine Alfred giving Joker singing pointers. “About all of this. About him. Being here.”

Alfred takes a long time to answer, and when he does, he puts his hand on Bruce’s shoulder.

“I think, Sir, that you’re doing something that you feel needs to be done. I cannot in good conscience fault you for that, even if I admit it does make me feel rather… uneasy.”

Bruce nods, throat tight. He can’t quite make himself look back at the screens.

“Besides,” Alfred says in a much lighter tone, “this arrangement will definitely help me while away all those long afternoons. Our new resident is much more entertaining than Family Feud.”

Bruce presses his hands to his face. The tightness in his chest is starting to ease, to give way to gratitude.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

Alfred’s hand on his shoulder squeezes.

 

***

 

Dick calls him when he’s out on patrol that night.

“So,” he says over the comm link, “you’ve officially lost your mind. How’s that working out for you?”

“You’ve been talking to Alfred,” Bruce sighs, scanning the streets below.

“No. Barbara. Did you know she’s found a way to hack into Arkham? Even the super secret files?”

Bruce takes too long to answer. Dick, of course, translates that correctly.

“You didn’t,” he accuses, “because you’ve been too busy _adopting clowns_ to actually talk to her. What the hell were you thinking, Bruce?”

“Does Jason know?” Bruce asks.

“Um, yeah? He’s right here. He doesn’t want to talk to you though and I can’t say I blame him. He’s extending his holiday, by the way. Doesn’t feel very homesick right now.”

Bruce closes his eyes. “Please tell him I’m sorry.”

“Are you though?” Dick presses, angry. “What about Barbara and Gordon? Why haven’t you told anyone, Bruce?”

“Because I knew you’d try to stop me.”

“Well, duh! Because it’s a crazy idea! Bruce, he _shot_ Babs! You saw! And you saw what he did to Gordon, and that’s not even going into all those people he’s killed! How can you even think about — about what, shacking up with him or something, I don’t even know what you’re trying to _do_ here!”

“I am trying to cure him,” Bruce growls into the comm. “I’m trying to stop him from ever hurting anyone else again. Arkham wasn’t working. Maybe this will.”

“You think a _change of scenery_ is gonna do what years and years of treatment couldn’t?”

“It’s different this time, Dick.”

“Oh yeah? How?”

“Because he’s agreed to it,” Bruce whispers. “He’s willing to work with _me_.”

“That’s what he told you?”

“Yes.”

“And you believe him.”

Bruce sighs. “I do.”

“Bruce, I don’t know what to tell you. You _know_ him. You’ve known him the longest of any of us, maybe except Gordon. But sometimes you get so — frustrating, when it comes to him, like there’s this giant blind spot, and I — but you don’t want to listen to me, do you? You never have. Me or any of us. You’re the big bad Bat and you know best. You know what? Fine. Adopt him for all I care. And when he breaks out and, I don’t know, kills Alfred, or finds his way into the cave, or puts _you_ in a damn chair…”

“That won’t happen.”

“Tell that to Babs!”

Bruce waits a beat, counts under his breath, stays still. A few moments and Dick’s hard breathing begins to even out. Only then does Bruce allow himself to speak.

“I haven’t talked to Barbara because she hasn’t answered any of my calls,” he tells Dick quietly. “I tried. But she needs time, and I respect that. I wanted to give her the space she needed.”

“And you didn’t wonder how she’d react when she learned you took the guy who shot her into your home? From a goddamn _file_?”

“I didn’t —” Bruce closes his mouth, searches for what will sound least wrong. “I didn’t realize she’d gain access to those files. I was planning to tell her myself, when she was ready to see me.”

“Well, she damn sure doesn’t want to see you now. Especially since you made Gordon keep it a secret from her too. Well done, Bruce.”

“I was trying to protect her.”

“Is it true what the police said?” Dick asks suddenly, and Bruce’s heart feels like it can’t possibly shrink any more. “Babs told me some of the officers said they saw you two, you and the clown, just standing there in the rain… laughing. Together. Before you took him in. Is it true?”

Bruce sighs. He was wrong. His heart can, in fact, get smaller. “They told Barbara that?”

“Yeah.” Dick sounds cold, unforgiving. “That’s why she didn’t want to talk to you. Well?”

“Yes,” Bruce whispers. “It’s true.”

Dick hangs up.

He might as well have been here to slap Bruce with his own hand — the tiny click of the link breaking feels sharp and stingy against Bruce’s heart. He’s left standing there in the cold night air, listening to the never-changing static of his city, and this time it isn’t quite loud enough to cover up the silence, which rings like an accusation.

_You’ve chosen him over us._

And Bruce knows it’s not true. It could never _be_ true. He’s doing what needs to be done, and… well, it’s not the first time it’s costing him things and people he cares about. He’d only hoped it would hurt less and less every time he has to make that choice.

It doesn’t.

So he flings himself down from the rooftop and onto a gargoyle, then another, then another, flying through the night until he finds an unlucky would-be mugger who can’t even beg for mercy by the time Bruce is done with him. Then he takes to the air again and keeps looking, and doesn’t come home till the first cold shades of pale gray streak across the skyline. 

 

***

 

The next day, he calls Arkham to make arrangements regarding therapy. It looks like the young doctor Quinzel is still one of the few volunteers left willing to interact with Joker, and Bruce doesn’t comment on her because it would be suspicious of Wayne to express concern over that but he does make a note to visit the Asylum later as Batman. That young lady seemed too… invested. That’s not a good thing to be when you’re going face to face with someone like Joker.

Bruce should know. He’s already way too invested for his own good. 

He goes up to the control room for the first time that evening, because he knows he should, and it’d be wrong if he never showed his face up there even though he’d gone to all the trouble of setting the whole thing up. But he doesn’t do it lightly, and he has a sinking feeling keeping up the Wayne mask is going to be especially difficult with no champagne and glitter and music to hide behind.

He brings coffee and tea instead, and donuts. He hopes it’s enough.

“How are we doing, gentlemen?” he asks loudly, stepping into the room. “My new guest behaving himself?”

There are two people in the control booth — a man and a woman, Bill Winston and Lakeisha Jones. Bruce knew that going in. He still acts surprised to see a female security guard, and makes a show of catching himself and grinning at her like he would grin at any socialite at a party. 

To her credit, Jones clearly couldn’t be any less impressed, and reaches for her donut with an expression that quite eloquently communicates to Bruce she eats buffoons like him for breakfast, and not in the kinky way either. 

“Finally decided to show your face, huh?” she murmurs. She points at the screens. “See for yourself, _Sir_.”

Bruce does, and what he sees makes his eyes go wide.

“Is he — ”

“Swinging on the curtains, yeah,” Winston confirms, slouching in his chair with feet propped up on the control panel. “Apparently the gym was no fun.”

“Pretty sturdy stuff,” Jones remarks. “You’d think the rod would break but it’s holding up remarkably well.” She munches on her donut, turning away from Bruce and towards the screens. “Then again, how much could the clown even weigh?” she muses. “He’s pretty much all bone.”

 _160 lbs_ , Batman wants to say. Bruce keeps his mouth shut and stares at the screens, where Joker is, indeed, clutching the old curtains in the parlor and swinging himself back and forth with delighted chuckles which, true to form, still manage to sound disturbing.

“How long has he been at it?” Bruce wonders.

“Around half an hour,” Winston says. “He was jumping on the bed earlier and making a mess of the library. I think he was going to rearrange all the books according to color before he lost interest.”

Bruce looks at the floor of the parlor. It’s littered with books, many of them spread open, their spines bent, their pages rustled. “Cute,” he murmurs. “Maybe I should get him some coloring books instead.”

Winston chuckles appreciatively. Jones snorts and rolls her eyes. “For all we know he’d appreciate it,” she judges. “Fucking creep.”

“You’re in for a treat, Mr. Wayne,” her colleague observes. “It’s almost meds time.”

Bruce knows. He schools his face into amused interest. “Is it really? He give you any trouble yesterday?”

“Actually, no,” Jones says. “He did ask about the Bat though. A lot. And then he just kind of… sat on the bed and stared out the window.”

“And took the meds in the morning again when the alarm went off. Bit disappointing, actually, I kinda wanted to see what the bracelet does.”

“You still might.” Jones sits back in the chair, reaching for another donut. “It’s only day two.”

“I’d rather not have to activate it if it’s all the same to you,” Bruce says. “It packs quite a punch if the Bat’s to be believed. I have a delicate stomach.”

“Cover your eyes then,” Jones says bitterly. “If anyone deserves a good electroshock, it’s this clown.”

Bruce gives her a sharp glance. He’s screened all the potential security guards to weed out those whose families have been hurt by Joker, or those who have been victimized by him personally, and she seemed clean. She shouldn’t have a personal vendetta. But then again, Gothamites have a tendency to take _every_ assault on their city personally. Maybe she’s simply an idealist who doesn’t like to see anyone hurt. Bruce can understand that.

And then, before he can comment, the alarm goes off. A shrill robotic beep, a pause, then another beep, followed by the mechanized voice instructing the Joker that “It’s time to take your medicine.” More beeps. The message repeats. And again. And again.

Bruce watches as Joker stops swinging, then gracefully slides down the curtain to the ground. “Cease this yammering,” he whines, looking up at the closest camera. “I _get_ it, Betty. It’s happy pills time. Shush.”

He waves his hand as though that could stop the noise. He makes his way towards the dumbwaiter, where the pills are already waiting next to a plastic cup filled with water. Bruce watches him as he stops just short, just out of reach, and studies the pills like they’re a sizzling bundle of dynamite sticks. 

He turns his head to the camera again.

“Who does a clown have to disembowel around here to get a cup of tea?” he demands.

Bruce’s heart beats hard and fast. This is it. This is where he finds out if he’s read the Joker right. 

“May I talk to him?” he asks the security guards.

Jones shrugs. “Be my guest, but don’t expect anything but quips and bad puns. He has to take the meds within the next, what, ten minutes? Or the bracelet will fry him.”

“Okay.” Bruce leans over the control panel between the guards and tips the microphone towards himself, then clears his throat. His skin feels clammy, and he prays his body won’t give him away now. 

“Hello, Joker,” he says into the microphone. “You can have tea if you behave.”

The reaction is immediate — Joker twirls in place and spins his entire body towards the camera, and his back shoots up straight so he’s suddenly much taller and seems to fill out the frame. Light goes off in his eyes as though someone’s flipped a switch. His grin shows off rows of sharp teeth, and there’s a spring in his step that hasn’t been there before.

He has an audience now. He’s performing. Bruce holds his breath and waits.

“Could it _be_?” Joker chirps, waving at the camera. “Is that you, Brucie darling? My, _ha_ , knight in shining armor, finally come to survey his battle prize?” He giggles, bright and manic, and executes a flawless pirouette. “I am so honored. I was starting to feel so sad and lonely, I almost thought you weren’t gonna come!”

Bruce forces his mouth into a smirk. “I couldn’t pass up the chance to say hello to my illustrious guest,” he says lightly. “How do you like your new home?”

“Oh it’s splendid, it really is. Much better than the stinky dives I’m used to. Personally I’d go for more color, but maybe I can talk you into that later, eh, Brucie? Five out of five, would pilfer again.” Joker laughs, fingers twitching, entire body moving with the sound. “I love the curtains, by the way. Did you know they make great swings? I bet you do. I can just picture you, tiny baby Bruce, going up up _upppp_ , flying high, like a brave little robin… or an owl… or a bat maybe… ”

“You have a perfectly good gym just through the door,” Bruce points out, trying to ignore the rush of blood in his ears. 

“Bah!” Joker shakes his head. “It doesn’t even have a trampoline.”

“Would you like one?”

“Would you give me one?” 

“Maybe.” Bruce smiles so it shows in his voice. “If you’re good.”

“I _am_ good!” Joker assures him. “Ask your goons! I’ve been very good!”

“Let’s see it, then,” Bruce says. “Take your meds.”

“Will you come down if I do?” Joker bats his eyelashes, and it isn’t the first time he’s done that at Bruce but the stab of vague discomfort in his gut is still the same. 

“No, but if you do you won’t get electrocuted,” Bruce advises him. 

“Oh, so that’s what this shiny beauty here does?” Joker points at the bracelet still fastened securely around his wrist. “I’d wondered. Thought maybe Batsy just wanted to give me something pretty.”

“The Batman doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who does that,” Bruce says, relief pooling in his chest. He’s guessed right: Joker won’t expose him, or not just yet. There seems to be some common sense under all those green curls, or maybe he thinks it’s more fun this way, but for now he’s playing along, and Bruce feels a bit more confident in his own skin. 

“I don’t know,” Joker drawls, “I hear he lets Catwoman keep some of her loot. Those diamond earrings would look much better on me, don’t you think?”

He poses for Bruce. Winston seems to be choking on his donut while Jones looks on with a disgusted expression, fist tightening on her lap. 

“I’m sure they would,” Bruce says, “but before we can find out, you should really take your meds. You know there’s a time limit on this?”

“Oh all right, if that’ll make you happy,” Joker grumbles, some of the spark going out of him as he turns to look at the pills again.

He stares at them for about a minute. Then he snatches them in his hand, all at once, and practically shoves them into his mouth, like he can’t stand to even watch them get closer, and washes them down with water as soon as he can. Then he shudders, and slams the cup back down. He rests his hands on the wall and bends over, hair falling all over his face. The beeping dies. All is quiet. In the sudden silence Joker’s heavy breathing grates against Bruce’s ears.

It’s not the pills that make him pant like that, Bruce knows. Their effect is not that immediate. It’s Joker himself, going against… whatever it is that drives him, and either he’s putting on a show or he must really hate taking the meds. 

“There,” Joker says after a moment, quietly, lifting his head just a little. “All done. Do I get a treat?”

“I think you got plenty of treats,” Bruce observes. “My butler tells me you liked the suits I got you.”

“Don’t they look good on me?” Some of the spark is back — Joker is pushing himself back up, and this time when he leans against the wall it is to strike a modeling pose that shows off the slim cut of his waist and the way the suit jacket stretches around his shoulders. “I must say I’m impressed you got them to fit so well. Then again, I suppose Batsy gave you some tips, didn’t he? We’ve waltzed the night away together so many times, Batsy and I, and he must have an eye for this sort of thing…”

“Waltzing, you call it?” Bruce interrupts. “Most people wouldn’t quite agree.”

“That’s because most people are stupid lifeless drones who wouldn’t see the bunny in the moon if it bit their noses off.” 

“Bunny in the moon,” Winston echoes in a whisper, shaking his head in disbelief. “What the everloving fuck…”

“Should I feel insulted?” Bruce asks into the microphone, and Joker giggles, hand burrowing into wild green curls. 

“Oh, but _you’re_ not at all like them, Brucie darling,” he assures him. “You’ve invited me in, haven’t you? And I bet you’re a terrific dancer. You should come down here sometime, handsome, show me your killer moves.”

“I’m no good without a pretty lady on my arm,” Bruce replies. Jones huffs. Bruce decides he likes her.

“I would gladly wear a dress for you, Mr. Wayne,” Joker offers, twirling. His voice drops low, into a purr he probably thinks is seductive, and the tension in Bruce’s gut turns uncomfortably hot. “A nice long one, tight, to emphasize my waist. And heels, too. Not too high, mind, I wouldn’t want to tower over you. I’d even let you lead. Carry me off, dance away in the pale moonlight…”

“Jesus Christ,” Winston whispers. Jones glares up at Bruce. 

“Are you quite done flirting?” she snaps. “Can we get on with our job?”

“Such as it is,” Winston comments under his breath.

“Of course.” Bruce gives Jones one of his more charming smiles, which only seems to irritate her more. “I’m sorry. Let me just say goodbye.”

She rolls her eyes again, but sits back with arms crossed over her chest as her colleague eyes Bruce uneasily. Bruce leans back to the microphone.

“I’ll think about it,” he tells Joker. “I need to go now. Do you want anything?”

“I want Bats to keep his word,” Joker says, suddenly menacing, all flirtatiousness gone in a blink. “Don’t let him ignore me. He doesn’t want to ignore me.”

“I’ll… pass it on,” Bruce promises. “Anything else?”

“Tea. And chocolates. I need looooooots of sugar to make up for those nasty pills you’re feeding me.”

Bruce nods. “All right. I’ll make sure the staff gets you everything. Alfred makes wonderful tea, you’ll like it.”

Joker nods, temporarily appeased. He makes his way to the sofa and flings himself on it, and idly picks up one of the books littering the carpet. 

“Your first therapy session is scheduled for tomorrow at noon,” Bruce informs him. 

Joker grins lazily at the camera. “How exciting.”

“You can request privacy for the duration, but I’ll be watching the rest of the camera feeds.”

“I’m counting on it, handsome.”

“Goodbye, Joker.”

Joker blows the camera a kiss.

Bruce turns off the microphone and straightens up, and rests his hands on his hips. “Well,” he tries, “that went… pretty well, considering.”

“Had fun, did you, Mr. Wayne?” Winston asks. “Good for you. I thought I was gonna hurl.”

“If you think that was bad you should come to one of my charity galas.” Bruce looks around. “Do you have everything you need? Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

“Short of installing beds?” Jones says dryly. “Nah, I think we’re good.”

Bruce nods. He’s furnished the control room with comfortable armchairs, sofas, a coffee maker, teapot and a fridge, as well as a bathroom with showers, and he hopes that will be enough. The security guards have their own hallway, staircase and entrance and aren’t allowed access to the rest of the Manor any more than Joker is. Alfred had insisted. 

“If anything comes up, let my butler know, he’ll take care of everything,” Bruce says.

“What about you?” Jones asks. “Can we contact you too?”

“Alfred has my phone number. I’ll be spending most of my time in the penthouse downtown. I’m sure you understand.” He gestures at the screens, and Winston nods with sympathy. “I can’t really invite beautiful ladies _here_ anymore, can I?” Bruce adds anyway, because it never hurts to go the extra mile.

“A damn shame,” Winston commiserates. “It’s one hell of a house, Mr. Wayne.”

“Thank you.” Bruce nods at him, then at Jones. “Have a good day.”

They let him go, and he leaves them with the sound of Joker’s giggles.

 

***

 

He visits Joker as Batman early the next morning, after he comes home from an uneventful patrol. They play cards. He wins. Joker smiles at him throughout, and goes to bed after Bruce leaves with a promise to return soon. 

According to Alfred, that’s the first time he’s fallen asleep on his own since he came here. 

 

***

 

Joker, as it turns out, is an insomniac.

Bruce suspected as much, but now he has direct proof — in the following fortnight Joker only sleeps for two-three hours at a time, sometimes four if he’s taken the meds right before, and always during the day, and manages even this little only once every two days or so. 

Bruce talks to the doctors at Arkham about this, and when he proposes to research a sleeping drug for Joker, they agree to help, though with marked reluctance. “We’ve tried that before,” one of them says, “but he’s immune to most medication and chemicals, as you know. We couldn’t find anything short of actual tranquilizers, and even then the dose was enough to knock out a rhino.” 

“Let me see the logs,” Bruce asks. “Maybe we can figure something out.” No therapy is ever going to succeed without a proper sleep pattern, and the project takes up most of Bruce’s brain space for the next couple of months.

Alfred doesn’t hesitate to point out the irony of the situation. Bruce tries to take longer naps just to shut him up.

At least, he points out, both he and Joker are eating properly. Alfred claims it’s “not as reassuring as you think it is, Master Bruce.” Bruce shrugs. He keeps working.

He passes Dr. Quinzel in the hallway once, on his way to the Arkham labs. She glares daggers at him through her glasses and walks around him without a word. He nods at her and doesn’t try to deflect the unspoken accusations, because they both know he was the one responsible for her being taken off the Joker rota. 

It’s for her own good. 

 

***

 

He delivers the surveillance tapes to Jim after the first month. Jim returns them the very next night, and the sight of his face drives a nail across Bruce’s heart.

“I couldn’t,” Jim says, shoving the tapes at Bruce. “I just couldn’t. I watched a few minutes maybe and then I had to go throw up. Can’t stand even looking at that —” His voice breaks. He shakes his head, and his fingers tremble when he reaches for the cigarettes. “Keep them,” he tells Bruce, “just — keep them, and tell Wayne not to send any more. I’ll give him a call if anyone here needs them, but I can’t — can’t keep them in the house. Barbara might accidentally… Just keep them.”

Bruce accepts the tapes silently, and nods. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. 

Jim nods back. His hands are still trembling.

“How is Barbara?” Bruce asks quietly. 

“She’s… adjusting,” Jim says, after a long drag. “It’s hard. We never realized how damned difficult it is for people in wheelchairs in this town. And she’s always been so…” He looks out over the city, wind blowing smoke in his face. “It’s hard,” he whispers.

Bruce gives him a moment, before he asks, “Is there anything I can do?”

“You figure out how to fix her spine in that cave of yours?”

“No.”

“Then no,” Jim says, “there’s nothing you can do. Except your job. Make damn sure no other freak ever gets close enough to hurt her again, and keep _that one_ locked up. That’s all anyone can do.”

“She has you,” Bruce reminds him. 

“She does,” Jim sighs, “God help her.”

Bruce takes the tapes and leaves, and drops off four thugs at Central that night.

 

***

 

He gets Joker a trampoline. Joker is cuffed and bound as the security guards assemble it in the gym, and Bruce as Batman can feel him positively vibrating with excitement as he holds him, waiting. 

Then, when the guards retreat, he releases Joker and stands there for a bit just watching.

He doesn’t realize he was smiling until he watches the security tapes later that day. 

 

***

 

About two months in Joker points out that his hair and nails are getting too long. That prompts Bruce to look more closely at his face, and once he does he also notices a dusting of green stubble on Joker’s chin, oddly sparse given how much time has passed but clearly getting thicker. Joker’s not allowed to do anything about it himself — no scissors, nail clippers or files are permitted anywhere in his quarters. His hair _has_ gotten rather long, falling almost to his shoulders now, and as for the nails, Bruce takes his word for it.

He has planned for this — mostly thanks to Alfred, who had pointed out to him the need for proper grooming — and he gets in touch with Arkham. They set up a date. The Asylum’s resident barber is driven to the Manor and shown into Joker’s quarters, and Batman stands by supervising as the man takes care of Joker’s hygiene swiftly and without a single word. For his part, Joker prattles at them both incessantly, his eyes swiveling between him and Bruce, and his fingers twitch, and his legs jerk nervously like he can’t quite control his excitement at having someone else to talk to face to face besides Bruce. 

He’s cuffed and bound, of course, and the barber seems used to his word-vomit. He still looks as relieved when it’s over as Joker is disappointed, and Bruce sends him a handsome check to make sure he doesn’t get any bright ideas about selling the story to the press.

“Are we going to do it like that every time?” Joker asks next time Bruce sits down to a game with him.

“Probably.”

Joker sighs. “Not that I mind the chance to mess with old Shrimpy every now and again,” he murmurs, “but I _was_ hoping for a more… personal touch.”

“I can’t cut hair,” Bruce tells him. “You’d look terrible.”

“Meaning I don’t look terrible now?” Joker perks up, smiles coquettishly, runs a hand through his much shorter hair. “Why thank you, honeycakes, I do try to make myself pretty for you. Speaking of which, I want lipstick. I can hardly look my best without it.”

Bruce sighs. 

“You walked right into that one, Sir,” Alfred tells him when Bruce shows up for breakfast later in the afternoon. 

“You were watching?”

“Of course. Someone has to keep an eye on you, Master Bruce.” 

“That’s what we hired the guards for,” Bruce points out. 

Alfred sets a cup of black coffee down on the counter, pats Bruce on the shoulder and leaves.

 

***

 

A week later Bruce buys Joker lipstick.

It’s a small thing. It can’t do any harm. And Joker’s lips look… wrong, without it, empty. Too wide and small all at once.

“You’re spoiling him,” Alfred says.

“I’m not.”

Alfred raises and eyebrow at him and goes back to cleaning.

 

*** 

 

Next time Joker asks for something, it’s music. 

“It’s too quiet in here,” he pleads. “Not even a grandfather clock to distract me!” 

“That’s the point. We’ve decided to limit sensory stimulation,” Bruce explains. 

“Come _on_ , Bats!” Joker attempts to kick him under the table. “I miss the city! The noise, the cars, the sirens, the screams, the crying babies… ahhhhhhh.” He closes his eyes as his lips stretch into a sated smile, like he’s immersing himself in whatever the memory of Gotham’s relentless soundscape is to him, and for a moment the expression of pleasure looks so intimate, so _obscene_ that Bruce has to fight the compulsion to look away. “I don’t know how you can stand being away,” Joker mutters almost sleepily. “Not a moment of silence, out there on the streets. It’s divine, Bats. No need to hear ourselves think!”

Bruce watches him shuffle in his seat, fold himself in, long legs crossing on the small chair. A drop of sweat beads on Joker’s white temple. The serene expression is wearing off; Joker’s pupils, when he opens his eyes, are dilated. He’s still smiling, but Bruce braces himself nevertheless.

“And then take Arkham,” Joker says, leaning forward. “They have some lovely sounds there too, Batsy. You should spend the night there once, maybe even in my cell, keep my old bed warm! I bet it still smells of me.” He giggles, one hand pressing against his forehead. “Oh, do excuse me. But yes, Arkham! The doctors strolling about, tap, tap, tap. Pens and clipboards. Keys jingling, and ol’ Danny boy whistling showtunes when he’s bored. And ooooooooh, my fellow inmates! Yelling, banging, crying… It’s wonderful, old friend. _Wonderful_. It’s music.”

He’s getting agitated, fingers twitching against the cards he’s pressing close to his chest. He looks out the window, at the dry morning sun, at the gardens, their fresh stark green edged by the woods and stretching as far as the eye can see. “Here,” he whispers, “there’s… nothing. Just me. Just — me. I can’t even hear the little birdies and other assorted woodland creatures since you made the entire place soundproof!”

“Your doctors claim you’re constantly overstimulated,” Bruce says, taking note of the twitch in Joker’s left eye. “We’re trying to minimize your sensory input to see if being cut off from excess noise will help with your mental balance.”

“How can it help?!” Joker throws his cards down on the table violently and pushes his hands up into his hair. “Bats, I’m going _crazy_ here!” 

Bruce doesn’t smile. It isn’t particularly funny, and he has a feeling Joker isn’t trying to be.

“It’s too quiet,” he mumbles, pulling at his hair as his eyes begin to zone out. “Too quiet, too quiet, too damn quiet.” 

Bruce puts his cards down too, gets ready. This looks bad. “Joker…”

Joker pushes himself to his feet, his chair crashing to the floor. Bruce tenses, but Joker isn’t attacking him — instead he starts pacing, making a wide circle around the parlor, his hands flying all over his body, frustrated fingers grasping and pulling at his suit and skin alike like they can’t bear to stay still with nothing to hold onto.

Like they want to latch onto Bruce instead. 

“Too quiet, too quiet, too quiet, TOO QUIET.” He kicks the sofa. He grabs a book at random and hurls it at the metal wall. “I can’t stand it!”

He laughs, grasps blindly for another book. Bruce is by him in an instant, closes his wrist in his hand, holds on tight when Joker tries to push him away. The other hand comes at him, fingers crooked like claws, ready to scratch, and he catches that one too, twists it behind Joker’s back. 

“Oh, are we finally going to dance again?” Joker laughs, loud and hoarse. Tears swell in his eyes — Bruce doubts Joker’s even aware of them. “Come on, sweetheart, I know you’ve missed this as much — as — I — have —” He tries to wrestle free, to kick and bite, and Bruce tries not to feel the thrill that suddenly sparks in his gut because this is _not_ the time, because he has to make this quick, no matter how much his body may yearn to slip back into that one of a kind rhythm it knows so well. 

This is Joker being unwell, not dangerous. An episode — which seems to have been building for quite a while now, judging by the intensity — not an assault. _Remember that, damn it._

“Need us to come in?” the security guard asks through the speaker.

“No,” Bruce tells her, “I’ve got this.” 

Joker tries to headbutt him, still laughing. Bruce wrestles him to the floor so they’re both sitting down and remembers what the doctors told him about manic episodes. He starts counting out loud, timing it with his own heartbeat, and clasps Joker’s hands together in one of his while the other grabs firmly at the nape of Joker’s neck. He makes Joker look at him. He keeps counting and doesn’t let Joker move away.

“Breathe,” Bruce urges. “Look at me and breathe with me.”

“I’m always look, huh, looking at you.” Joker is hyperventilating, his pupils two tiny points of hate and distress, but they _are_ fixed on Bruce even though they appear hazy, unfocused. He’s still jerking away, violent full-body jerks that test Bruce’s hold.

“We’re sedating him,” the security guard announces.

Bruce grits his teeth. “No!”

“But Batman —”

“No!” 

“Delicious voltage,” Joker sings, weakly, between one ragged shard of breath and another. “Sweet, sweet voltage. Let ’em, Bats, let ‘em zap me, let ‘em zap me nooooow…” 

He coughs, and as his eyes squeeze shut with the motion tears break free to streak down his hollow cheeks.

Bruce tightens his hold on the back of Joker’s neck and shakes. “Focus,” he pleads. “Focus, dammn you!”

Joker laughs until he can’t anymore, until it’s either that or choke.

And Bruce looks on helplessly, watching as his breaths get shorter and shorter, and wonders if maybe activating the charge in the bracelet really _is_ the only thing to save this man now…

And then he remembers darkness. He remembers a swarm of black shapes rushing at him, hundreds of beady yellow eyes, the flap of leather wings against his face. He remembers screaming, and crying, and the frantic thump of his heart, and not being able to breathe, and choking on his own air, and he remembers…

_It’s okay, Bruce. You’re safe now. Mommy’s here._

She’d pulled him close, onto her lap, and pressed his face against her chest so he could listen to her heartbeat. He can still hear it, even now. He can feel his own heart slowing down at the memory.

He looks at Joker, and sees a child lost in a cave. 

Joker can’t feel his heartbeat through the suit. It’s the one downside of kevlar Bruce never anticipated. But he remembers the way Joker leaned into him that first morning when Bruce carried him to the bed, and maybe it’s worth a shot, so he tightens his grip on the back of Joker’s neck again and says, “I’m going to pull you close now.”

Joker doesn’t seem like he’s heard him at all. He doesn’t fight when Bruce makes good on his promise and coaxes him closer, though, or when he presses Joker’s face to his chest, or when he lets go of his neck for just long enough to remove one glove. 

He guides Joker’s fingers to press against the pulse in his own bared wrist. “Feel,” he urges. “Feel my pulse. Breathe.”

Joker’s nails have been cut short and filed blunt, but Bruce still braces himself for an attempt to claw the skin of his wrist open. Tranquilizer injections lie in wait in his belt, and he knows he can get to them before Joker inflicts any real damage.

It doesn’t happen.

Joker’s fingers stay where Bruce leaves them, still for once and deathly cold. He doesn’t move away from Bruce’s chest. There’s a twitch when Bruce rests his hand at the back of Joker’s neck again, but it isn’t a violent one, and when Bruce starts to stroke there, Joker’s breathing finally, _finally_ begins to even out.

It takes a long time. Bruce doesn’t know how long exactly but it feels like hours. He keeps counting, makes breaks for breathing deliberately deep, and feels absurdly rewarded when at last he catches Joker’s pulse trying to sync with his. The fingers on his wrist shudder, then press on their own against the exposed veins just under the skin. One finger moves, bends a little, traces an invisible line over Bruce’s wrist. It tickles. Bruce keeps himself still. The finger is gentle, not in a delicate way but like it’s curious; and soon, or maybe not so soon because it’s impossible to tell, the other finger moves too, following the same line. Then they both press, lie still, before moving again. 

They follow the rhythm of Bruce’s fingers on Joker’s neck.

It’s working. It’s _working_.

Bruce doesn’t move away, not even after Joker’s breath finally eases into a normal, healthy pattern. The fingers on his wrist reach out, circle it, close in a grip that’s strong but somehow unthreatening; Joker’s other hand rises from numbness to trace the lines of Bruce’s stomach. 

And the thing is, Bruce expects to have to fight a wave of revulsion at this, but it never comes. 

It worries him. He’ll think about it later.

For now, Joker’s hair brushes and tickles around his mouth, and Joker’s heartbeat beats slow now, tired and strained, and quiet sounds struggle past Joker’s lips that could be his attempt at humming but which don’t resemble any tunes Bruce knows. 

He holds on. They sit there, breathing in sync.

In the end, Joker doesn’t fall asleep, exactly — his eyes stay open. His body stays aware. His mind, though, drifts, and he’s disassociated almost entirely when Bruce does finally move to stand up. 

He’s expected that. He carefully guides Joker to the sofa, sits him down, asks for water.

“It’s okay,” he says to the cameras, “I think it’s passed.”

He takes the plastic cup of cold water from the dumbwaiter — thank you, Alfred — and carries it to the little table by the sofa. “Drink,” he instructs Joker. “I’ll leave you now.”

“I need it to not be so quiet,” Joker whispers. He is staring at nothing in particular, eyes zoned out, fixed on a point in the carpet. 

Bruce watches him for a moment, thinking hard. “I’ll talk to the doctors,” he promises. 

Joker twitches, but he doesn’t reply. 

“See if you can try and get some sleep,” Bruce suggests. “I’ll check on you later.”

He leaves in silence, and immediately goes down to the cave to watch the camera feeds over and over and over.

 

***

 

At night, he takes the recordings to Arkham and shows them to the doctors, and says, “I don’t think he’s faking it.”

“You’ll let him bully you with tantrums into giving him what he wants?” Dr. Lancer asks, his eyebrow quirking up skeptically.

“He’s not faking,” Bruce insists.

“If you cave in now he’s gonna think he can manipulate you into anything by going spare.”

“He isn’t a spoiled child, doctor.”

“Isn’t he?”

“Batman,” says Dr. Mulligan, watching Bruce sharply with her deep brown eyes, “need I remind you that limiting the stimuli was your idea?”

“He does what he wants anyway,” Dr. Lancer grouches. “I don’t see why he even bothers to consult us at all.”

“The Joker might have been transferred to a different facility,” Bruce says calmly, “but he is still a patient of this institution. I need your expertise.”

“I think the silence is a good idea,” Dr. Mulligan admits, shooting her colleague a glare, “but obviously a period of transition is necessary. We are still going to control the external impulses he receives, but maybe we could introduce some… variations, at fixed hours of the day.”

Bruce nods. He’s been thinking along similar lines. Only… “Nights,” he corrects. “He’s most active at night. That’s when he’ll need the distraction the most.”

“All right,” Dr. Mulligan agrees. She doesn’t seem surprised, and studies him, her astute gaze dislodging something twitchy and uncomfortable in Bruce’s stomach. “You handled the attack rather well,” she comments in a level voice. “He hasn’t responded like that to anyone here.”

Bruce does not fidget. He says, “Let’s brainstorm.”

They do, and two days later Bruce Wayne introduces Joker to his new schedule. They are going to play him one hour of jazz standards a day, in the evening, and after that they are going to play pre-recorded ambient noise tapes with the soundscape of Gotham at night between 10pm and 2am. The tapes will be quiet and unobtrusive, and won’t contain anything more exciting than police and ambulance sirens every now and again, but Joker is still beside himself with relief, and climbs the shelves to the nearest camera to actually kiss it, leaving smears of lipstick on the lens. 

And the worst thing is, Bruce _understands_. That’s what he couldn’t explain to Dr. Lancer. He knows Joker wasn’t faking, because _he_ can’t imagine functioning so long without the soothing hum of his city each night, and for better or worse Joker is a city boy, carrying Gotham in his blood just as much as Bruce does. Gotham _is_ noise. The silence of the Manor drives Bruce into distraction too, and he still has his night patrols to shake it off.

He should have thought of that sooner.

 

***

 

The first time they play the music Bruce sits in the cave by the monitors, watching. Joker has decided to celebrate by wearing the finest suit Bruce has provided and slicking his hair back with water, and he’s wearing shoes too, complete with spats, looking to all intents and purposes like a vaudeville artist about to go on stage.

Which is exactly what he does when Sinatra begins to croon through the speakers. 

“Ah, at last, someone in this house can pull off a decent foxtrot,” Alfred comments, amused, standing beside Bruce. “Maybe you should ask for lessons, Sir.”

“If you couldn’t teach me, no one can,” Bruce parries. “But maybe I should start sending him to parties in my stead. He’d have enough fun for both of us.”

“Enough skill, too,” Alfred adds mercilessly. “Maybe he was a dancer in his old life. That would explain some of the showmanship.”

“Maybe,” Bruce muses.

He watches Joker glide through the floor of the parlor, leading an imaginary partner in his arms as he sings along, and wonders.

 

***

 

“Do you remember anything from your old life?” Bruce asks a week later during another early morning visit.

He’s brought Joker crayons, and watches as Joker lies on the floor and covers page after page with color.

“Oh Bats,” Joker murmurs, “don’t be boring.”

“I’m curious.”

“I’m sure you are, I just can’t imagine why. It doesn’t matter who I was. You made me, and I was born properly, and that’s it.”

“Did you have children?”

Joker’s hand scratches against paper in a jagged line. He stills, then frowns up at Bruce.

“Maybe I did,” he says, shrugging, “maybe I didn’t. Maybe I left behind an orphan who’s going to become your new bird-boy when you get bored with the current one. Where is he, by the way? Not watching us right now, surely? Or did he finally decide to ditch the tights?”

“He’s away,” Bruce says quietly. “Don’t you remember at all?”

“Why would I even want to?” Joker smiles, not quite one of his manic grins but a slier one, and bends over the paper again. “Can you imagine me saddled with some mewling brat? No sir _eee_. I wouldn’t know which end to feed. Kids are boring, Batsy.” He giggles, high-pitched and just a touch hysterical. “No wonder _you_ like them so much.”

He presses hard against the paper, red crayon digging deep enough to tear the sheet in half. It looks like blood. Bruce stands up to take the crayon out of Joker’s hand, and hands him a lavender one. 

“This color looks better,” he says.

Joker laughs and paints a long lavender swipe across Bruce’s chin.

Bruce slaps his hand away. “Stop that.”

“But you said you liked it! And you look so much better that way!”

Bruce gets up and leaves, and Joker laughs and laughs and laughs.

 

***

 

Bruce calls Dick that evening, and asks for Jason. 

Miraculously, after a minute or so, Jason agrees to talk to him.

“How’s the clown?” he asks straight away. “He still in the house?”

“He is.”

“He try to break out yet?”

“No. There’s only been one serious episode so far.”

“Then he’s planning something.”

“Maybe,” Bruce agrees. “Maybe not. He hasn’t tried to attack anyone.”

“Yeah, you can’t tell me that’s not suspicious.”

Bruce says nothing. He glances at the monitors, where Joker sits on the windowsill, singing and rocking back and forth as he stares out at the flickering lights of Gotham.

“Look, Bruce, do you think you need me there?” Jason asks, brusquely, like he’s angry at himself for it. 

“I wouldn’t mind the extra help,” Bruce admits, throat tight. “I’d feel much safer knowing there’s someone in the house with Alfred when I go out.”

“That’s all you need me for?” Jason snaps. “To be your clownsitter?”

“No,” Bruce says. He takes a moment to think, really _think_ about what he’s going to say next, and the truth doesn’t quite want to make it out of his mouth. He settles for, “I need my partner.”

It’s what Jason wants to hear, he knows. It also _is_ the truth, even if not the whole picture. He waits. 

Jason is quiet for a long time.

“I’ll be back in two weeks,” he says eventually. “But only because you’re too fucking dumb to watch your own ass.”

He hangs up immediately afterward, but Bruce still smiles to himself as he reaches for his coffee.

 

***

 

“So,” Selina says, dropping in front of Bruce on the rooftop of the Gotham Cathedral, “word on the street is you’re no longer content adopting little bird boys, you’re adopting clowns now, too.”

“Hello, Selina.” Bruce doesn’t get up from his crouch, but he nods in her direction. “Is that the only word out there?”

“Awwwwwwww, look at you, so cute thinking I’ll just give you the intel for free.” Her teasing smirk is familiar, but with a sharp edge Bruce has never been able to read. “How about some of those diamonds you keep in your family safe? They might help jog my memory.”

“You’re not getting them.”

“Well, it was worth a try.” Her smirk turns sharper still, white teeth gleaming in streetlight. “Then how about a different sort of trade? My place isn’t that far, you know.”

Bruce sighs and turns to watch the streets. She saunters over and sits beside him, legs dangling freely over the traffic far below. 

“Oh all right,” she says after a minute. “I might give you a freebie this time. For old times’ sake.”

She grins. Bruce ignores the bait, his eyes firmly fixed on the slow-moving traffic. He waits.

“Well aren’t you just a party boat.” Selina sighs dramatically. “I remember now why I ditched your ass… even though it does look damn yummy in tights.”

“Will you get to the point?”

“Okay.” Selina’s expression, or what Bruce can see of it out of the corner of his eye, turns serious, all pretense of flirting gone from her voice. “First of all, they only know that the Joker is gone from Arkham. They don’t know where to.”

“But you do.”

“Of course I do. I know everything.”

“How, Selina?”

“I spied on your house,” she explains easily, without a single trace of shame. “I do that sometimes when I’m bored. Your butler should seriously do stand-up.”

“I’ll let him know you said that,” Bruce mutters, mentally promising himself to talk to Lucius about new security systems for the Manor. Selina is one of a kind and can get places even he can’t sometimes, but it’s still disturbing. 

Selina is silent for a minute, eyes fixed on the string of car lights. Then she sighs. “It _has_ leaked that you’re personally involved in his therapy,” she says, “and that he’s playing along for once. Most of the smarter bosses are taking it with a grain of salt and waiting for the other shoe to drop, but some of the others… Harvey’s already given the orders to loot Joker’s known dives. He’s hounding Joker’s goons, too, and Cobblepot and the others won’t be far behind.”

“They’re slicing up the cake,” Bruce murmurs. 

“Yeah. And there’s a lot of cake to go around. Joker’s taken over some valuable territory and the others want in on that. There’s talk of big money stashed away in the warehouses. People are starting to believe he really isn’t coming back this time. There might even be a turf war.”

Bruce nods. “I expected something like this might unfold,” he says. “Just… not so soon.”

“Soon?” Selina gives him a raised eyebrow. “Bruce, from what I heard it’s almost been a year. Joker has never stayed put for so long before. I’m surprised it’s taken the other players this long to make a move.”

 _Almost a year._ Bruce supposes she’s right. The realization jolts him, and he isn’t quite sure why. 

“It’s working,” he whispers to himself.

Beside him, Selina says, “Or he’s playing you.”

“Maybe,” Bruce agrees. “But even if he is, he’s been off the streets for this long. If it’s all a game to him it’ll still have been worth it.”

“Of course he’s stayed put,” Selina whispers with a sudden bite, “you’re finally paying attention to him the way he’s wanted you to from the start.”

Bruce looks at her sharply. “What?”

“Oh please.” She rolls her eyes, claws gripping the stone ledge. “Don’t say you haven’t noticed, _detective_. That creepstain wanted nothing as bad as to be your bitch ever since you first pummeled his sorry ass into the ground.”

Bruce’s throat clenches suddenly. He looks away. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

Bruce can feel his jaw tightening, teeth pressing into each other to the point of pain. Selina’s eyes drill into him, sharp and perceptive. The smirk fights its way onto her face again. It’s far too knowing for Bruce’s liking, as is the huff she lets out a moment later. 

She doesn’t comment. He’s grateful for that much.

“You know what’s going to happen if he does break out and gets back out there and all his assets are gone,” she says quietly after another minute or so. 

“Yes.” Bruce can picture it pretty damn clearly. Mostly in red. A shudder runs down his spine, and the muscles in his shoulders go tight. “I don’t know if I can stop them.”

“Then don’t focus on stopping _them_ ,” Selina suggests. “Focus on keeping him in. It’s one bloodbath the city really doesn’t need.” 

“I know. I’m trying.”

“Try harder. The underworld is starting to talk. And they all hate the Joker almost as much as they hate you. However this all plays out, it’s gonna be ugly.”

Bruce nods. Selina moves to leave, and Bruce doesn’t try to get her to stay.

“Be careful,” she tells him before she backflips her way into the night. “Gotham would be boring without that idiotic signal of yours.”

Bruce finds a smile for her before he, too, leaves and gets to work.

He goes after Harvey’s men that night and gathers intel on all his latest operations. It’s about time his old cell in Arkham saw its occupant again, and with time — who knows? — Harvey might agree to a similar deal he’s extended to Joker.

It _has_ almost been a year. Bruce thinks he’s allowed to feel hopeful tonight.

 

***

 

The conversation still pries on his mind next time he visits Joker, and he finally decides to ask.

“Why did you say yes?”

Joker looks up at him from his cards. He shrugs. “They do make rather amazing strawberry shortcakes in that Italian place in Fashion District.”

Bruce frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“The last date I agreed to go on,” Joker says with a smirk. “Why, what were _you_ talking about?”

“A date you —” Bruce shakes his head as though that could dislodge the sudden mental image he decidedly does not want, and pierces Joker with a glare he knows the clown can detect even through the cowl. “I mean this,” he growls, making a sweep with his arm to indicate the parlor. “The deal. Why did you take it?”

“Oh, that.” Joker lets out a long puff of air, like it’s the most boring topic Bruce could possibly choose. It’s an act, and they both know it. Bruce keeps waiting.

“Well, isn’t it obvious?” Joker demands eventually, squirming in his chair. “I should think it’s obvious. You’re supposed to be able to out-deduce Sherlock Holmes, Batsy-booby.”

“Maybe I need you to spell it out for me,” Bruce insists. 

“Tsk-tsk. When have I ever made anything easy for you?”

Bruce keeps looking at him. He doesn’t want to call it quits just yet, even if it’s just a gut feeling telling him he should keep prodding.

And anyway, he thinks he _has_ figured it out, for the most part. He just really, really, _really_ doesn’t want to think about the conclusions. 

Selina’s knowing smirk flashes in his mind, mocking him. He pushes it away. 

Instead of pursuing the subject any further, though, Joker lays his cards down on the table. He looks at Bruce expectantly. 

Bruce sighs and stands up to leave without showing his hand. Joker’s voice, unusually soft, stops him right by the door.

“Gordon,” he whispers. “He didn’t… he didn’t crack.”

All of a sudden Bruce feels cold. “No,” he says, sharply. “He didn’t.”

Joker nods. He seems hesitant, almost vulnerable, and Bruce is suddenly thrown off-balance by how much he hates seeing him like this.

“If he didn’t,” Joker whispers. “If one bad day didn’t send him round the bend… on top of all the other bad days. If he…”

Bruce waits, heart and breath and thought all still, but Joker never finishes the sentence. It dies on his lips like so many had died from his hand, and like Barbara had almost died from his gun.

Suddenly it’s important to remember that. Important to pitch that against the hot twist in Bruce’s gut, and the urge to linger, to _reassure_.

Because he thinks he knows where that sentence was going. And he thinks he can understand.

In any case, it does make the picture slightly more coherent, providing it’s not a lie. 

Somehow Bruce doesn’t think it is.

“And you laughed,” Joker says softly. “You laughed with me.”

Bruce nods. His throat is filled with sand, but still he forces out, “I did.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re ridiculous,” Bruce whispers.

“Heh.” Joker smirks, a poor shadow of the smiles that usually light up his face, and he stretches his legs out under the table, folds over it, hunches. Makes himself smaller. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I’d wondered if you realized. The thing is, though… I _made_ myself ridiculous. It was on purpose, see, to mirror _you_. You’ve started it all… darling. So what I wanna know is, why am I the one who’s gotta change?” 

And just like that, Bruce is angry. His fists tighten, pressure builds in his gut. “I never killed anyone,” he snaps. 

Joker points to him, then at himself. “Mirrors,” he repeats. Like it’s obvious. Like it explains everything. Like Bruce should see the joke.

He leaves before he can say anything more, and stays away from the camera feeds for the rest of the day.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's part 3! Which also marks the end of what I had pre-written, so please take note that the wait from now on is going to be considerably longer because this story is challenging and I want it to be the best I can make it. 
> 
> A warning for this chapter - we're slowly entering into more, shall we say, physical territory? There will be sexual content in the fic and this chapter serves as a sort of stepping stone. I'm not sure how explicit things will get later on, but the rating may well go up.
> 
> Also, remember what I said about bad decisions? This is pretty much it. Both characters behave like childish idiots and things are basically not great. 
> 
> It gets better though, so there's that.

Bruce doesn’t regret his decision to stay away from the camera feeds. Gotham gives him enough release for the anger that by the time he gets back he feels ready to review the conversation with Joker with fresh eyes, and he gets out of the car intending to do just that when the look on Alfred’s face stops him dead in his tracks.

Oh no. 

“What has he done?” he demands. “Has he hurt anyone?”

“Not, ah, not exactly.” Now Alfred seems embarrassed, of all things, and though Bruce is only able to tell from the hesitant tremor in his voice and nothing else, he still _can_ , and his heart does a painful lurch down his stomach.

“Alfred,” he insists. “What the hell happened?”

Alfred gives him a long, measuring look. Then he reaches out for the cape and cowl, and Bruce reluctantly surrenders both, apprehension only growing. 

“Why don’t you change first, Master Bruce,” Alfred suggests.

Bruce does, but only because he can recognize the tone of his voice. In a way, Alfred can be just as stubborn as he is, and it’s clear now Bruce won’t find out anything else unless he does as he’s told. 

“The security guards were quite distraught,” Alfred tells him, following him around the cave as Bruce sheds his costume piece by piece, and the night with it. “They… Well, they demanded that we give them a raise. For psychological damage, I believe they claimed.”

Bruce stops, the suit halfway off his chest. “Details, Alfred. Now.”

“Perhaps you should review the tapes,” Alfred says at last. Now his expression turns cryptic, and Bruce doesn’t like it one bit.

“Tell me what to expect,” he demands. “Has he breached security? Has he tried to hurt himself?”

“Not _hurt_ , per se,” Alfred tries, choosing his words like a man navigating a verbal minefield. “Let’s just say there is one thing both of us have… overlooked.”

Bruce’s gut feels like someone’s doused it full of ice cubes. He makes short work of the rest of the costume, leaves it for Alfred and strides for the shower without another word, because if it’s not urgent then Bruce would much rather face whatever the hell this new crisis is not stinking of the rich and fascinating wildlife of the Gotham River.

By the time Bruce re-emerges, freshly scrubbed but still feeling uncomfortably sticky, Alfred has made himself scarce and the only thing stirring in the cave is the bats up above. It only spikes Bruce’s suspicions. He towels his hair dry as he sits in front of the computer, and he grants himself one more minute of blissful ignorance, just one more, before he seeks access to the Joker tapes. He has a nasty inkling he can guess what it was that made the guards _and_ Alfred so uncomfortable, and he isn’t at all sure he’s ready to see it now, or, for that matter, ever.

 _He wouldn’t_ , Bruce tries to convince himself as he fast forwards through the day, starting from their conversation and speeding past the usual footage of Joker’s aimless mucking about around the rooms. _Would he?_

But of course he would. He’s the Joker. If anyone would, it would be him.

Still, Bruce holds onto a paper-thin shred of hope like it’s one of his grapples until he arrives at the footage from late evening, during Joker’s scheduled one hour of music, which the clown chose to spend in his bedroom, jumping and twirling on the bed to the mellow beat. That alone is regular enough. What isn’t regular is how… joyless the jumping looks this time, and how violent, how — resentful. Like Joker isn’t doing it just because it’s fun, but out of spite, for someone else’s benefit — Bruce’s, Batman’s, the guards’? Or maybe his own. Maybe he’s trying to keep up appearances to prove a point, though what that point could possibly be, Bruce can only guess.

It reminds him of some of the visits they’d had earlier, at Arkham as well as the Manor, and especially while they’d still been developing the meds. Joker had been _trying_ to appear his insane, unpredictable self back then, and Bruce was able to tell the difference just as he is now. This is not thoughtless frenzy — this is calculation. Like a child who’s had his candy taken away trying to pretend he’s not bothered. _Sticks and stones can break my bones. Look at me, I’m_ fine.

And sure enough, Joker proves Bruce right by abruptly stopping mid-twirl, body snapping into place and long arms flapping loosely at his sides as the momentum propels them on. He stares at his own feet. His entire frame is still for three heartbeats exactly. And then he says, “This isn’t fun.”

His voice is low. His pupils dilate. Bruce can see a vein pulsing on his long white neck.

For a moment, he fears he’s about to witness another episode, one he wasn’t there to subdue. His mind instantly leaps to images of destruction: books flying, bedsheets torn, bedposts kicked into smithereens, Joker hyperventilating until the bracelet zaps him with enough voltage to bring down Killer Croc. What happens next initially confirms the prognosis.

“This isn’t FUN!” Joker complains, wild pupils suddenly darting around in search of a target, or maybe a weapon, and he loses all pretense now, fed up with the act and maybe even disgusted with it. Long legs kicking, he throws himself backwards onto the bed, then begins to roll across it, this way and that, this way and that, his body twisting first into a fetal position and then unfolding again, only to curl back in on the next roll. His mouth is in constant motion, mumbling nonsense the camera doesn’t catch, far too fast for Bruce to lip-read. One hand shoots up to claw at the headboard; the other flails just as the rest of Joker’s body does, and for a moment it looks like he might start hitting his head against the wood.

But then it all… stops. As suddenly as he’d stopped dancing, Joker stops moving now, landing on his back and catching himself there. His body is wound so tight Bruce could count the protruding veins if he so wished. His eyes are open; they are fixed on the canopy above the bed, but Bruce imagines they’re not seeing a single thread. Joker’s chest raises and falls, and ragged scraps of breath struggle their way past the music, which is much quieter now, the guards likely having turned it down to hear if they should intervene.

It lasts for two minutes, maybe three. 

Then, even before his breath calms down, Joker smiles.

“That wasn’t fun,” he drawls, looking directly into the camera with eyes which are still far too bright, the pupils two tiny black points rimmed with toxic green, “but I know what might be.”

His hand rests on top of his chest, over his heart. His smirk turns nasty.

And then, slowly, he starts to undo the buttons of his green shirt.

Bruce forces himself to sit still and keep watching, because that alone may not be leading to what he’s afraid it is. Joker might just be feeling too hot. Maybe he wants to get more comfortable. Maybe it’s completely non-sensual.

But Joker’s fingers linger on each button, circling it like he’s relishing each moment of preparation, and that _is_ sensual. Sensual is the way he opens his shirt, slowly, and lets his fingers whisper against the skin underneath. And sensual is the way his right hand eventually drifts to ghost against the zipper of his pants.

The moment it does, Bruce slams the pause button and pushes himself away from the control panel as though it’s caught on fire.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He’s not going to watch this, he decides. He already knows what the tape contains. He really does not need to see any more, and he’s going to have a long talk with Alfred about what kind of surprises are and are not okay. 

He manages to make it halfway to the stairs before he stops and growls, “Damn it.”

The screen still shows Joker on the bed, flat on his back, his shirt open, one hand arrested in the motion of skimming along his abdominal muscles while the other presses indecently against the zipper. It’s perverse. Repulsive. 

Bruce can’t make himself look away.

The bathroom adjacent to Joker’s bedroom is equipped with cameras too, of course it is, and as such, like it or not, Bruce has seen more of Joker in recent months than he ever thought he would. He’s always fast-forwarded through the bathroom footage when he reviewed the tapes at the end of each day, not looking away from Joker’s nakedness but purposefully not lingering on it either because while monitoring him at every turn is necessary, it still doesn't sit right with Bruce. He’s tried to distance himself from it, to regard the eerily white expanse of Joker’s body in strictly clinical terms, and if anything, the fast-forwarded footage usually helps ground him in the knowledge that Joker is, in the end, human.

Even if seeing him unclothed, all his sharp angles and hard muscle on display, his white skin oddly vulnerable without the bright colors to set it off, does at times feel… wrong. Like Bruce has no right to see Joker like this. Like the power imbalance between them in their current situation only comes out in sharpest relief during those most private, most intimate, most human moments, because Bruce has the power to see Joker in those moments now while Joker…

Joker is there to be watched, to be _looked at_. He’s seen nothing of Bruce in return.

And it doesn’t matter that Joker doesn’t seem to mind, that he isn’t at all bashful about undressing, showering and going to the toilet with the cameras trained on him. It still seems… unjust. 

Not to mention that when it isn’t hidden under splashes of color, Joker’s skin can no longer pass for makeup, and the sight inevitably spirals Bruce’s mind back to the ACE Chemicals vats and the putrid stench of acid, and a hand slipping from his, and the terrible splash when the body breaks the surface. 

It’s mostly why Bruce never, ever allows himself to look away. It’s his mistake. He _will_ own it, like he owns everything else. 

And that’s all there’s been to it, up until now.

Christ, Bruce hasn’t even thought about — He’s never stopped to consider —

But of course he hasn’t. _Pleasure_ is not exactly something he has the space for in his mind, or the time, or the energy. Most of the time he just doesn’t think about it. By the time his patrols are over he is too drained to do much of anything at all except sleep or — more often — work, and… physical things… simply aren’t on his radar.

Ha. Joker, on the other hand, has nothing _but_ time, and plenty of energy to spare. Bruce should have realized. He should have predicted Joker would, in time, pull something like this. 

His eyes catch on where Joker’s fingers lightly touch the planes of his stomach, and want to turn lower.

Bruce curses and looks away.

The Joker won’t win this round. He fucking won’t.

Heat throbbing furiously just under his skin, Bruce stalks back to the computer. His fingers shake as they hover over the keys. The chill of the cave doesn’t stop him from overheating, and he swallows, pulling his body under control. 

He should just delete the feed, from the files and from his mind. He does not need to see any of it. He doesn’t _want_ to.

His finger pauses just over the “delete” button.

On the screen, Joker’s lazy smile taunts him like he’s saying, I know you’re watching, I know you can’t resist, I’m doing this for you. Bruce wants to punch his teeth in. To grab him by the lapels of the suit and shake and shake and _shake_ him until the smile is wiped clean off. He wants —

He groans, pressing his hands to his face. “You sick bastard,” he mutters. Warmth pools in his gut, hot, prickly, insistent, and he can’t seem to be able to will it away no matter how hard he tries. “You sick, sick bastard.”

Bruce knows, with that cold, blunt certainty of someone finding himself in the middle of the rail tracks with the train speeding right at him, that after tonight he will never be able to review the footage of Joker’s nakedness with the same detachment again. He will always be reminded of — of this. Of Joker as a sexual being. Joker will never let him forget. 

And, of course, that means he’s already won. 

Damn him.

In the end, Bruce isolates the feed from the entire night — using the timestamps to navigate so he doesn’t need to actually see any of it — into a separate file, then encrypts it under five layers of passwords and hides it deep in the labyrinth of completely unrelated files where he’s sure it won’t be accidentally dug out by anyone other than himself. Like it or not, the feed is a resource. Bruce isn’t in the business of discarding anything that might prove useful in the future, and rationally, Joker has just given him additional intel not only about his unique physiognomy, but also about his sexuality, or what he wants Bruce to think his sexuality is. Either way, it’s new information, new details to store and preserve and consider, and when it comes to this man, Bruce won’t treat _any_ insight lightly.

Actually, looking at it from this angle, Bruce probably _should_ watch it, if only for this new bit of information which may or may not prove critical in the future.

He just… can’t.

The feed blinks out from the screens a moment later. Bruce leaves the cave before he can change his mind and heads straight for the gym, ants of restlessness crawling up and down every muscle. 

He figures he isn’t going to catch any sleep anyway. 

 

***

 

The first thing Bruce does in the morning is give the guards a raise.

Then, in the evening, he visits doctor Mulligan in her office, getting in through her open window. She gasps when she turns to see him standing behind her.

“Dear God,” she says, adjusting her glasses. “If that’s how you always choose to show up it’s little wonder we’re running out of cells.”

“The Joker,” Bruce says.

She sighs, sitting back in her chair. “Yes? What has he done this time?”

The questions push to the tip of Bruce’s tongue and linger there, balancing precariously on the edge. _What do you do when the inmates need — privacy? Do you afford privacy at all? What about the inmates’ sexual urges? How does that_ work? Doctor Mulligan is watching him, sharp as always, and Bruce isn’t sure if it’s the power of her gaze freezing the words in his mouth or if it’s his own fault but he finds he can’t let any of it out after all.

“The sleeping pills,” he says instead. “I think they’re ready for testing. I will have them administered tomorrow.”

“Oh.” She shifts, crosses one leg over the other, blinks. “All right. Do you want one of us to be there?”

“No. I will deliver the tapes later. But you should be informed.”

“Yes, well, of course.” Doctor Mulligan adjusts her glasses. “Is that all? You seem kind of… on edge, though I honestly have no idea how I can even tell.” 

Bruce thinks of the recording buried deep on his hard drive. His jaw tenses. “That’s all.”

“Okay. In that case, I have lots of work to do so if you don’t mind showing yourself out…”

Bruce is out the window before she’s done speaking.

 

***

 

Joker isn’t told about the pills. 

Instead, Bruce grinds the testing dosage into powder and sprinkles Joker’s food with the stuff, and sits by the computers in the cave watching and waiting silently for the results.

The pills knock Joker out for ten hours straight.

And Bruce tries not to think of it as revenge, but there’s still ugly satisfaction wriggling in his gut as he takes to the streets that night.

It’s a new dance. Joker himself said so. There’s new rules.

Bruce has simply evened out the score.

 

*** 

 

When Jason returns — a week later than he’d promised — he’s still angry, and he’s not alone.

“Show us,” Dick demands, stepping into the cave behind his younger adopted brother, though Bruce knows neither of them thinks of the other like that. 

Both their expressions are stony, unyielding; they won’t take well to small talk. Not that Bruce expected any. He nods at them both, then invites them do join him by the computer, where he taps into the camera feeds and talks them through every detail of security. On the screen, Joker lies on the floor of the parlor, reading; seems like it’s a quiet day.

“All right, it seems solid enough,” Dick agrees eventually, with obvious reluctance. “But I’ve seen this guy fight his way out of Arkham using nothing but a toothbrush.”

“This isn’t Arkham,” Bruce says.

“Yeah, no kidding.” Jason has his arms crossed firmly over his chest, radiating disapproval. “And you’re not a fucking doctor, Bruce.”

 _Language_ , Bruce wants to say, and doesn’t. It’ll only make Jason swear more, and point out that Bruce isn’t his real father, and while true, the words always cut. 

“I’ve been working with the doctors,” he explains quietly. “He still has therapy sessions twice a week. I’m not doing this alone.”

“I’ll believe _that_ when I see it,” Dick mutters under his breath.

Bruce pretends he didn’t hear that. It’s easier that way.

“That voltage in the bracelet,” Jason says after a moment. “Can we control it?”

“Yes.”

“Can we make it high enough to kill him?”

Bruce spears him with a glare. “Jason.”

“What?” Jason shrugs, unrepentant. “I’m just asking. Technically it’s my house too. I just wonder how far you’re willing to go in case he decides he’s bored with this damn experiment.”

Bruce looks away. “Not that far.”

“Seriously?” Jason strides up to him, forces Bruce to meet his eye. “Not even as a precaution? Do you have failsafes or something to stop anyone from pulling the trigger?”

“There _is_ no trigger,” Bruce says, forcing himself to keep his voice steady. “The voltage only goes high enough to incapacitate him and prepare his body to intercept the sedative dart which will knock him out. That will be sufficient in case of emergencies.”

“Unfuckingbelievable.” Jason turns to Dick, like he’s expecting help there. “Did you hear that? He thinks stunning the clown will be enough if he… if he…”

“It _will_ ,” Bruce insists. “If Joker ever finds a way to break out, or the will to, the discharge and the sedative will give us time to lock him up again. He’s monitored day and night. He won’t get far.”

“And what if none of us are here to intercept him?”

“The guards know the code for the bracelet. They can activate it and lock him up themselves.”

“Grayson,” Jason says, turning to Dick. “You tell him. This can’t be just his call.”

Dick looks at him, and then at Bruce, his eyes cold and searching. Bruce makes himself sit still, holds his head high and accepts the scrutiny. It hasn’t been easy for them recently, but Bruce hopes that despite all their disagreements, the most important lesson stuck. 

His heart feels sore when Dick walks past them both and leans on the control panel, looking up at the screens. His eyes narrow dangerously, the pulse in his neck throbs hot and tight. The bones in his wrists whiten as he presses his fists closed.

“There is nothing I’d like more than to get half an hour alone with that grinning maniac, after what he’s done to the Gordons,” he whispers. Then, however, he sighs as though the weight of an entire cargo ship is bearing down upon him, and Bruce hears the _but_ in his voice before Dick even articulates it, and there may have been moments in his life when he felt more relieved but he’d be hard-pressed to find one right now. 

“But,” Dick says after a moment, “I think it _is_ Bruce’s call in the end. He’s the one who orchestrated this whole mess and he’s the one responsible for it. And as much as I hate Joker, I… I don’t think a lethal voltage would be right.”

Bruce is careful to keep his face very still, to not react. But his muscles want to relax, just a fraction, and he lets them, and the next breath he takes flows much more easily. Some of the soreness in his heart eases. He feels lighter, and relieved, and —

Proud. 

He wishes he could tell Dick. 

But Jason is watching them both now, eyes big with outrage and incredulity, and Bruce keeps his mouth shut because he’s already made too many mistakes with the two of them and he’ll be damned if he stumbles into another one. They don’t need to be pitted against one another any more than they already are. They’re both his. 

He can only hope Dick will know.

“I should have known you’ll be soft about this too,” Jason bites. “And here I thought you were finally tired of licking his bat-boots.”

“That’s rich coming from the guy who couldn’t wait to get into my Robin costume.”

“Quiet,” Bruce orders before this can escalate. 

“Am I the only one here who thinks about this realistically?” Jason demands, sharp as the blades he still likes to hide in his boots when he thinks Bruce can’t see. “The fucking _Joker_ lives in our _house_. Where we live, and eat, and _sleep_ , and where — hello, this detail might have escaped you — the _Batman_ also lives. How long do you think until he figures it out?”

That seems to knock some of the wind out of Dick’s wings; he turns to Bruce, expectant. “Killer Porcupine here’s got a point,” he admits reluctantly. “Got a plan for that, Bruce?”

Bruce opens his mouth, then closes it. His stomach twists itself into tight knots as his thoughts trip over themselves in their hurry to weigh all the pros and cons and outcomes, and rationalizations, and excuses. 

He can’t tell them the truth. He will lose them for good.

The only thing he knows for sure is that he _can’t_ lose them.

So he settles for a half-truth, and tells them what matters most: “He’s not interested in who Batman is. Even if he figures it out, or — or if he has already — that’s not what he’s after. It’d spoil his fun, ruin the game. Our identities are safe.”

For now. He hopes.

“You act like you can actually predict what he’s going to do,” Dick mutters. “Even you aren’t that good.”

“Joker is predictable in some things,” Bruce points out. “You know that. The spectacle, the performance, the pattern… There are some things that won’t change for him. This one is crucial.”

“That’s a lot riding on just a hunch,” Jason argues.

“It’s more than just a hunch.”

“Oh yeah? Then correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t this thing supposed to be about him finally _changing_ the game? Isn’t that the point, to flip the board? You honestly think normal rules still apply if he’s living under your roof? That, what, the two of you got some sorta code?”

“No code,” Bruce says. 

“Then what?”

Bruce looks into his eyes. “Just trust me on this one.”

“No!” Jason counters, voice rising, anger finally pushing through. “Not this time. You don’t get to demand trust now, not after you went ahead with this behind everyone’s backs. If we’re gonna do this you gotta trust _me_ for a change, dammit, and you gotta share some fucking information for once! Or else I walk and you can have _him_ for a sidekick.” He gestures to the screens. Despite the oppressively heavy air between them, Dick snorts.

“Good luck getting him to wear the tights,” he comments, and then pulls a face. “Ewwww, okay, you know what? _Gross_. The image’s in my head now. I need like, ten showers and a Playboy.”

“Don’t try to distract us, Grayson,” Jason snarls. “If you’re not gonna help then at least shut the hell up.”

“I told you everything you need to know,” Bruce insists. Jason rounds on him again.

“Not good enough! You _asked_ me to come back and I’m not staying until I know for sure it’s safe.”

“It is.”

“Because you say so?”

“Yes.”

“Um, guys?” Dick tries. Bruce barely hears him.

“You need to have better contingencies in place,” Jason presses.

“There’s plenty of contingencies. They’re adequate.”

“Arkham’s security was supposed to be _adequate_ and guess what? For freaks like him that pretty much means revolving door!”

“Guys.”

“The Joker has not tried to break free even once since he came here.”

“That doesn’t mean anything!”

“It means he’s keeping his word.”

“As if! He’s playing you like you’re that damn card of his, or maybe he just likes living on Bruce Wayne’s dime for a change. What do you think he’s gonna do when he gets bored?”

“Excellent question, Robin,” Dick interjects forcefully before Bruce can argue his corner. “If you two would _kindly_ look at the screens, you might get an idea.”

All senses going on the alert, Bruce’s eyes snap to the computers, and his heart grinds to a screeching halt when he finds Joker staring right back at him. A smile, small and pensive, lingers on his painted lips, and he keeps himself unnaturally still, not a muscle twitching. 

“He’s been sitting like this being creepy for at least a full minute now,” Dick says, leaning over the control panel. “Should we, and I’m just spitballing here, do something about it maybe? Or is that normal for him now? You’re the expert, Bruce.”

“It’s not normal,” Bruce tells him, frowning. “Joker is never still if he can help it. Something’s up.”

“He can’t… he can’t hear us, can he?” Jason asks, going quiet. 

“No.”

“Because it kinda looks like he’s listening.”

“He’s not. That’s impossible. No, he’s… waiting for something,” Bruce judges. And then his eyes snap to the clock at the bottom of the screen, and he realizes: it’s almost time for Joker’s afternoon meds.

As if on cue, the reminder alarm in Joker’s quarters goes off, the shrill beep-beep-beep and the electronic announcement, and Bruce’s body was already tense but now it’s trying to go tenser still. Something is definitely wrong. He can see it in Joker’s eyes, in the cold, cruel curve of his smile.

“Well that’s disturbing,” Dick judges, turning to Bruce. “What happened, all the creepier alarms were sold out? I thought the point was to cure him of evil, not make him froth at the mouth every time he’s gotta take his pills.”

“Why is he not taking them?” Jason narrows his eyes, lips thinning into a hard line. “Bruce?”

Bruce says nothing and keeps looking at the screens. 

Minutes pass. The alarm keeps going. Joker doesn’t move from his spot on the floor.

Finally a guard’s voice, mechanically altered to sound sterile and impersonal, breaks through the signals and says, “Joker. Take the medicine.”

Joker’s smile turns almost sweet as he shakes his head. “No.”

“We’re going to have no choice but to release the charge and tranquilize you if you don’t.”

“Go ahead, chums!” Joker offers his hand up, the bracelet catching the stark midday sun and setting it off to bounce around the room in bright gleams. “Make sure the shock’s nice and strong, Wally, I’ll know if you slack off!”

“My name isn’t Wally,” the guard snaps. 

“Well I gotta call you lovely guardian angels something, don’t I? Anyway, you sound like a Wally. I knew a Wally once and he sounded a lot like you before I had to crush his windpipe.”

“Take the goddamn meds,” the guard orders.

“I don’t think so, Wally old chum.” Joker stretches his legs in front of himself and leans his back against the sofa, crossing his hands behind his head. “I think I’ll take the good ol’ brain massage instead. I’ve missed it, you know?” He sighs dreamily, closing his eyes. “That doctor Lancer, always so eager to bring in the thrills. Had a good hand for the lever and knew _just_ how to make me tingle in alllllllll the right ways. Mmmmmmm…”

He giggles. It sounds studied, just as his jumping on the bed had been. Bruce feels cold. 

“Don’t make us come in there,” the guard warns.

“Oh, but wouldn’t that be fun?” Joker grins, cold and joyless. “We could have a nice tea party together. It’s been ages since I saw an entire human face and not just a pretty cowly pout!” He puts his fingers in his mouth and pulls the corners down, eyebrows shooting into dramatic arrows down his forehead, imitating a scowl. 

Dick snorts. Bruce and Jason glare at him.

“What?” he murmurs, turning back to the screens and shrugging. “It was a pretty good impression.”

“We’re not fooling around, clown,” the guard barks. “We gonna electrocute you for real.”

“But see, that’s what you said the other night, Wally dear, and yet what have I to show for it? A damn spectacular orgasm, sure, but not a single ziggy-zaggy spark to truly make my night!”

“The hell?” Jason’s brows go so high up they disappear into his hairline, and on the other side of Bruce, Dick looks equally stunned.

“Bruce, why’s he talking about orgasms?”

Bruce grits his teeth. “Quiet!”

“You don’t think we gonna do it?” the guard demands. “You testing us?”

“Naaaah,” Joker admits with a shrug. “Sorry, Wally, no offense, I’m sure you’re sweet an’ all, but I couldn’t give two hoots about _you_. You’re the C-list and I’m only batting for the big boys.”

“Well, it don’t matter if we press the button or not,” the guard points out. “If you don’t take the meds in three minutes that thing’s gonna go off anyway.”

Joker looks into the camera again. He licks his lips, smirking. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

“Bruce?” Dick turns to him. Bruce puts up a hand to silence him, mind racing.

The guards have no idea he has his own link to the feeds. If he reacts now, he’ll blow that cover and they will demand explanations. That could jeopardize the entire set-up.

On the other hand…

The timer keeps going. Two minutes left until the first discharge. Joker is still smiling into the camera, his eyes narrowed.

Damn it.

“Joker,” Bruce growls, activating the cave’s comm connection. “What are you doing?”

Joker’s eyes narrow further, and Bruce knows, in that moment, that this was precisely the plan: to get him involved.

“I had a feeling you’d be watching, sweetheart,” Joker croons. “Stick around, the show’s about to get properly electrifying!”

He laughs. Bruce’s knuckles whiten as he grips the microphone. “Take the meds,” he insists.

“No.”

“This wasn’t the plan, Joker. You’re breaking the rules.”

“But Bats,” Joker hisses through his cold, cold smile, “I thought you preferred me all Sleeping Beauty!”

Oh. Oh. Bruce wants to curse, and chews on the words until he finds his voice again. 

“Is that what this is about?” he demands. “You’re going to hurt yourself to punish me for trying to help you sleep?”

He knows he’s got it right as soon as he says it. It’s clear in the feral glint in Joker’s eyes. 

“Was that it? Was that you helping me?” Joker drawls, his voice dripping with menace. “Because it _seemed_ like you drugged me to keep me out of the way, like a, like a rabid dog, without so much as by your leave! And after I put on such a lovely show for you, too!”

He’s angry. He’s shaking with it, laughing it out in Bruce’s face. 

Bruce glances at the timer.

50 seconds.

“We’re developing sleeping pills for you,” Bruce says urgently. “I’ll explain later, but you have to take your meds.”

“You’ve broken the rules!”

“I have not. I’m still helping you.”

“You promised to work _with_ me, Bats!”

“The meds, Joker.”

“Fuck the meds.” Joker folds his hands in his lap, licking his lips again. “It’s been too long. I wanna _feel_ something for once.”

10 seconds. The red light on the bracelet sparks to life dangerously and begins to blink in and out in warning. Joker claps, delighted. “Ooooooooh, hold on tight, kiddos, here comes the drop!”

“Joker!”

“Hope you got your seatbelt!”

Dick grabs Bruce by the shoulder. “It’s gonna —”

The bracelet glares in red. Joker laughs, and the sound turns terrible when, in the very next blink, the first charge goes off.

Bruce is out of the chair and bounding up the stairs before the cry dies out and Joker’s body hits the floor, Dick and Jason hot on his heels. The bracelet is programmed to release three rapid charges, separated by a five-second window, to weaken Joker’s body enough for the dart of tranquilizer, inserted three seconds after the third charge, to take hold. Bruce knows that unless he has grossly misjudged the dosage Joker will be out cold by the time he makes it to the enclosed area. There really isn’t any need for him to run, the rational part of his brain points out as he sprints out of the cave and makes his way up to the third floor. 

He keeps running anyway.

“Jason,” he barks on the way, “get Alfred. Tell him it’s code green. He’ll know what to do.”

“You do realize none of us are wearing the suits?” Dick points out, running beside him, as Jason darts off in the direction of the kitchen. 

Shit. Bruce almost forgot. He keeps running all the same, but as he does, he wills himself to switch from Batman to Bruce Wayne, and by the time he reaches the metal door to Joker’s quarters he is reasonably sure he can pull off his other self more or less convincingly.

It’s a good thing, too. The guards, Winston and Benjamin Carter — whom Bruce only recognizes from his resume — are already by the door and punching in the security code, and they turn when they hear Bruce and Dick charging up the stairs.

“Mr. Wayne!”

“Gentlemen.” Bruce nods at them as he makes a show of stopping and leaning on his knees for a moment, panting. “I heard there was a bit of a problem with my guest…?”

They both eye him, clearly puzzled. Then they look at Dick. He offers them a winning smile.

“My charge, Dick Grayson,” Bruce explains, pulling himself back up but still taking care to breathe heavily, as though unaccustomed to even this much physical strain. “He’s come over to visit for the weekend and I was just about to take him out to town when Alfred alerted me to the situation.”

“We didn’t know you was home, Mr. Wayne,” said Winston.

“Dick really wanted to see Alfred,” Bruce explained smoothly. “We took a nice long walk around the grounds. Gotham downtown doesn’t have much to offer in the way of fresh air, I’m afraid. Now…” He looks to both men and asks, “What seems to be the problem?”

“We can deal with this,” Carter tells him curtly, his eyes sharp and narrow. “No need to go in there with us, sir.”

“I’m sure you’re more than capable,” Bruce assures, “but even so, I would like to check on the patient personally. I _am_ responsible for his well-being. I’d be a very poor host indeed if I didn’t make sure everything’s under control.”

They consider him, hesitant. Bruce takes a leaf out of Dick’s book and grins at them. “At the very least,” he says, “you may need me for the heavy lifting.”

“All right, Sir, but be careful,” Carter says eventually, still unconvinced. “The inmate should be knocked out but he’s a tricky son of a bitch, Sir.” 

Bruce’s congenial smile settles into a smirk. “Duly noted. Now, let’s take a look.”

They order him to step back anyway and to wait for their signal, and Bruce makes himself listen even though every nerve in his body screams to take charge. By his side, Dick whispers, “When this is all over you and I are gonna have a talk.”

Bruce’s shoulders want to square. He keeps them hunched, even though his fingers flex in the pockets of his pants. 

“It’s okay, sir, you can come in now,” Winston calls out from Joker’s parlor. “He’s out.”

Taking a deep breath and schooling his face into apprehension, Bruce goes in.

Carter is on the ground, kneeling by Joker’s still body and feeling his pulse. Winston hovers over them, face crinkled into fear he’s trying and failing to conceal, and he makes way for Bruce when he comes closer and crouches on Joker’s other side.

A violent impulse surges in him to knock Carter’s hand away and order both men to leave so he can tend to Joker himself. He squashes it, but his teeth hurt from gritting too hard. 

“What happened?” he asks, acting puzzled and confused and out of his depth. 

Carter sighs and lets Joker’s wrist drop lifelessly onto his skinny chest. “Bastard refused to take his medicine. The bracelet activated and zapped him and then it put him to sleep so now we’re gonna have to hook him up to an IV and do this the hard way.”

Bruce widens his eyes into an exaggerated expression of shock. “Has this happened before?”

“Not like that, Sir,” Winston says. “He had an episode once, but Batman kind of… dealt with it.”

“Sir, did you know Batman has direct access to the feeds and his own comm link to the rooms?” Carter asks. 

Bruce shrugs, ignoring his searching eyes and looking at Joker’s slack, gaunt face. “He may have mentioned something,” he offers, “but to be honest, I didn’t get most of what he talked about. I had a late night and it sounded so very… technical.” He makes an embarrassed face. “I guess it makes sense? He has all sorts of gadgets. He’d probably want to keep an eye on this one personally.” 

“Doesn’t seem right,” Carter mutters. “I mean, what are we here for? Are we even necessary? Can he hear us talking in the control room? Why didn’t he tell us?”

“From what I know of the Batman,” Dick says from the doorway, “he’s not really big on telling anyone anything, not even Gordon or his own sidekicks. Don’t take it personally.”

Bruce keeps his eyes fixed on Joker and chews on the urge to glare at his adopted son.

“Creeped the hell out of me, that’s all I know,” Winston whispers. He looks at Carter. “Hey, d’you think he saw —?”

“Probably,” Carter agrees, his face the picture of disgust. “God only knows what he makes of it.”

Bruce knows exactly what they’re talking about, but still he lifts his head and asks, “Gentlemen? Something I should know?”

“No, Sir,” Winston tells him immediately. “Nothing you should concern yourself with.” He looks down at Joker’s body and sighs, a bone-deep sigh of someone who hates what he’s about to do but knows he has to do it anyway. “We should probably get him to the bed…”

Carter nods, his handsome face set into grim lines. “Please step aside, sir.”

 _No_ , Bruce thinks. The word rings out in Batman’s voice. _You’re Wayne now_ , he reminds himself. _Get it under control._

He clears his throat and gives both men a sheepish smile. “Actually,” he says, coloring his voice brighter, “how about I do it? I’ve been working out, you know, and I want to see if it paid off. I didn’t have the chance to try it out before now and if I can’t pick up a woman when I try it’s just gonna be embarrassing.”

The guards blink. They look to one another. “You actually want —”

“Indulge me,” Bruce pleads, and laughs awkwardly. “I don’t remember the last time I’ve been this close to an actual supervillain without them taking me hostage. It’s actually quite exciting.”

From the doorway, Dick narrows his eyes at him, and Bruce can feel him glaring a hole into the side of his head. He’s going to want to talk about this, too, or at least be Eloquently Silent at Bruce as soon as they’re alone. 

Bruce will worry about this later. For now, he slips his arms under Joker’s unmoving body before the guards can protest, cradles him in his arms and slowly gets to his feet. 

“At least now we know this thing definitely works,” Winston says after a spell of charged silence. “That’s… good.”

“Indeed.” Bruce nods, smiling at them both. “I’ll take him to the bed. If you would please get the restraints ready…”

They scramble to grab the chains and cuffs, and Bruce turns to carry Joker to the bedroom.

 _You idiot_ , he thinks, glancing down at the clown’s face. _You damned fool. You absolutely had to, didn’t you? You just had to prove your point._ The Joker’s face stays still, lips caught in the shadow of a smile that the discharge froze on his mouth, and it’s like he knows, and is mocking Bruce even when he’s unconscious. 

And then there are other thoughts in Bruce’s head pushing to the front, like that Joker’s lost weight. Considerably. Last time Bruce carried him there was the straight-jacket in the way, softening some of Joker’s sharp bony angles, but even taking that into account the discovery is… worrying. Is he eating enough? Bruce thought so and Alfred never reported any trouble, but then… 

He’s going to have to keep an even closer eye on his guest from now on.

“We’re ready, Mr. Wayne,” Winston says by the door to the bedroom.

Bruce nods and carefully lays Joker down on the bed.

The guards set to work, fastening the cuffs around Joker’s wrists and ankles with a chain connecting the two sets to limit the patient’s movements as much as possible, and Bruce lets them, listening to their murmurs. It’s clear they’d much rather add the straight-jacket to the ensemble but that’s out of the question, and the reason wheels into the room a moment later, Alfred announcing himself with a polite cough.

“Good Lord,” he says, looking at the bound figure on the bed with studied, controlled alarm. “You’re not leaving anything to chance, are you?”

“We’re leaving plenty to chance, Mr. Pennyworth,” Carter murmurs. “I used to work at Arkham. I saw what this freak can do with the chains and it ain’t pretty.”

“Then we had better hurry,” Alfred says, pushing inside the tray with the IV drip already prepared. “If you would be so kind as to stand aside…”

They do and Alfred swoops in, taking control, his hands sure and steady as he gets ready to attach the IV to Joker’s arm. And Bruce knows he should leave. He should make up some sort of ludicrous and cowardly, transparent excuse to scramble out of there and let them work. That’s what the guards probably expect of Wayne. The problem is, he isn’t quite Wayne now even despite his best efforts, and he can’t make himself — his true self — move from his spot by the window. He’d be leaving not only the guards, but _Alfred_ , with an unconscious but still dangerous Joker and that’s — that’s impossible, plain and simple. He’s responsible for them. He has to be here to protect them.

He looks at Joker’s face, and a small, traitorous voice hisses in his ear, _All of them_. 

 

***

 

Both Dick and Jason are standing with their arms crossed over their chests, staring him down. Dick says, “Now can we talk?”

“You’re not allowed to say no,” Jason adds.

Bruce glances at the monitors. The feed from Joker’s rooms shows him on the bed, under the covers, his pillows thrown to the floor and his body tucked in on itself across the bed and against the headboard, angled in the single position that hides his face from all of the cameras in the room. 

“Bruce,” Jason snaps. “He’s fine. Stop looking at him.”

Joker’s not fine, and the ostentatious position screams at Bruce that he wants to communicate that to the world. Bruce unglues his eyes from the screen all the same and faces his sons. They won’t let him escape that. Might as well get this over with.

“I’m… listening,” he tells them.

“Wouldn’t that be a first,” Dick mumbles. Then, in his full voice, he presses, “What the hell, Bruce?”

“It’s not normally like that,” Bruce counters.

“Yeah, that’s not exactly reassuring,” Jason snaps. 

“What was all that about sleeping pills?” Dick demands.

Bruce can feel himself bristling, closing up on them. His fingers want to curl into fists. He keeps them firmly spread open on his lap and looks right back at them, unblinking.

“I am developing a drug to help regulate his sleep pattern,” he explains with all the calm he doesn’t feel. 

“You?”

Bruce grits his teeth. “With the doctors at Arkham.”

Dick raises an eyebrow at him. Jason prompts, “And?”

“I tested it yesterday and the result was encouraging. The dosage had en effect.”

“Okay.” Dick nods, expression tight. “So far so good. Now feel free to add what you were trying to leave out.”

“I wasn’t —”

“Come now, Master Bruce,” Alfred says, descending into the cave with a tea tray. “We all have to own up to our sins from time to time.”

Bruce glares at him. “I haven’t done anything I regret,” he says. “It was necessary for a proper test. If Joker had known about the drug, he would have refused to take it, or tried to fight it, and —”

Dick holds up a hand. “If he’d known? You mean you drugged him without telling him first?”

“I had to,” Bruce insists.

He watches Dick’s eyes harden, and excuses try to tumble out of his mouth. That’s when Jason steps forward.

“Okay, this actually makes me feel a bit better,” he admits, giving Bruce a searching look. “He’s a murderous maniac. He doesn’t need _coddling_. You did what you had to do.”

“That,” Dick says sharply, “or you went on a power trip.”

Bruce meets his glare with one of his own. “That’s not what this is about.”

“Isn’t it? Are you absolutely sure? Because _he_ seems to think it is,” he argues, pointing to the Joker. “And you know what? Suddenly what happened today makes a whole lotta sense.”

“Dick —”

“He’s taking back control,” Dick carries on, voice laced with the same steel that gleams in his eyes. “He thinks you’ve taken away his control so he’s reacting in the only way he thinks he can. He may not have a lot of choices but he still has _some_ and he’s exercising them.” He takes a deep breath and looks to the ground. “Or, you know. At least that’s what it looks like.”

Behind Dick, Alfred allows himself a smidgen of a smile. He obviously agrees with Dick, and it sets Bruce’s teeth on edge.

“It’s not about control,” he insists.

“Yes it is! I saw you with him today, Bruce! It’s all _about_ control! You wouldn’t even let the guards handle him, and don’t think I didn’t notice how badly you wanted to chase them out of the room and do everything yourself! You think you’re the one in sole control of him now and for some goddamned reason he’s agreed to let you and you can’t resist pressing the point on him and, and, and he’s pushing back! And you’re telling us it’s different this time, that he’s changing, but what I saw today is just more of the same, the same _stupid_ old game you two have been playing from the start, only now that the scale is so much smaller neither of you can hide what it’s always been about!”

Bruce’s heart is slamming in his neck. He opens his mouth. “It’s not —”

“Personal? Yes it fucking is and you know it. It’s all about the two of you. You’re still playing the game, Bruce. You never stopped.”

“What’s gotten into you, Grayson?” Jason asks before Bruce can object. “Suddenly you’re a clown lover, after what he’s done to the Gordons?”

“I remember what he’s _done_ ,” Dick hisses. “But I also understand what Bruce has done and what that means.” He turns to Bruce now, and his face turns even colder. “He’s your prisoner. You’re responsible for him. You’re the one with the power. He _cannot leave_ , and you’re the one with the power to feed him, clothe him, house him, or zap or drug or hit him whenever you feel like it. Tell me there isn’t a part of you deep down that enjoys this. Tell me that’s not what you’ve always wanted.”

Bruce’s eyes narrow. His fingers curl on his lap. “I’m doing this to keep my city safe.”

“See, I really want to believe that,” Dick says. “I think _you_ believe that, mostly. But after today…? I don’t know that you won’t let this get the better of you. What you did with the drugs wasn’t ethical, Bruce, and it’s not for that damned clown’s sake that I’m worried, you know that, don’t you?” His tone turns quieter now, almost pleading. He takes a step forward. “The most important thing you taught me,” he says, “the one that’s gonna stay with me no matter how hard I sometimes wish it wouldn’t. Justice, not vengeance. This? I have no idea what this is.”

Silence settles over the cave. Some of the bats above stir, some take flight. Water drips down the walls. From the computer, GCPD patrol reports mingle with street traffic and even deeper silence from Joker’s quarters.

Bruce knows what he’s supposed to say. He just… can’t.

“If I may, master Richard,” Alfred interjects quietly, inserting himself into their circle and putting three full tea cups down on the control panel by Bruce’s elbow, “I really do not think it’s either.”

He locks eyes with Bruce and smiles lightly. Bruce works his throat, not sure how to react. 

“Maybe,” Dick allows. He sighs and physically deflates, as though most of the steam oozed out of him along with his breath. “It just, it doesn’t feel right.”

“Dramatics,” Jason mutters, rolling his eyes. 

Dick holds Bruce’s gaze for a moment longer and then turns to Alfred, forcing a smile for him. “Sorry, Alfred, I won’t be staying,” he says. “You can have my tea. I’m going to visit Babs.” He turns to Jason, expectant. “You coming?”

“You go ahead,” Jason tells him, “I’m gonna visit her some other time. Not so big on third-wheeling.”

That brings a chuckle out of Dick, a haggard, awkward little thing that dies on his lips a moment later when he glances at the screens. He turns and makes for the stairs.

“Dick,” Bruce calls out to him, and Dick stops. 

“Yeah?”

“Please tell Barbara…” Bruce considers, then sighs and massages his temples. “Please give her my best.”

“She may not want to hear it, but, okay.” Dick shrugs and turns away from them for good. “I don’t think I’ll be coming back here. Be seeing ya, I guess.”

He leaves. The three of them watch him go, and then Jason turns to Bruce.

“Well, are you just going to sit here and mope all night or are we going out?” he asks, ignoring Alfred’s attempts to get him to drink his tea.

Bruce steals a glance at the screens. Joker hasn’t moved from his curl by the headboard.

“Uh, unless you’d rather go and —” Jason points to the screens, frowning. 

Bruce turns away from the computer and shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Let’s go. There’s work to do.”

“Look, don’t listen to Grayson,” Jason says, following Bruce to where they store the suits. “He’s gone soft. You’ve done what had to be done and if anything, it kinda… it made me feel better about the whole thing.” He pauses, glancing over his shoulder at the computer. “It’s still a fucking mess though,” he adds under his breath.

Bruce doesn’t respond. He grabs the suit. “Come on, Robin,” he says.

Jason follows him.

 

***

 

Gotham winds fail to blow Bruce’s mind clean of Dick’s voice; Harvey’s men fail to intercept his frustrations. Jason’s presence at his side is a comfort, but a small one, and by the time they return to the cave Bruce feels no less _full_ of that itchy kind of restlessness than when he’d left. 

Jason doesn’t comment until they’re both changed from the suits into their day clothes, or, in Jason’s case, pajamas, and then, quietly, he touches Bruce’s shoulder.

It lasts no longer than a blink and then it’s gone. Jason looks away, ducks his head, bends to tuck in the laces of his sneakers. He looks embarrassed — even angry, like he’s just revealed a weakness. Obviously he wants Bruce to pretend this moment never happened.

And Bruce wants to say something, but the words shrivel up and scatter to dust in his throat before he even knows what they are. So pretend he does.

“I’m gonna stay for a while,” Jason says, avoiding Bruce’s eyes. “It’s a mess over here. You obviously need me to keep things straight.”

“I… all right.”

Jason nods, curt and final, signaling a definite end to the uncomfortable interlude of _feelings_. Bruce would smile if he didn’t feel like he was balancing on the edge of a razor blade in the middle of a snowstorm. 

Then Jason leaves, rubbing the back of his head as he goes, and leaving Bruce with an enormous yawn in lieu of a goodnight. 

Bruce turns toward the computer, now blank. For a moment his fingers hover over the keyboard.

…No. Not this time.

His footsteps kick up furious echoes to scatter around the cave as he stomps back up to the mansion, startling the bats into flight.

 

***

 

“It would appear our resident Clown Prince is trying out a new diet,” Alfred says as he serves Bruce and Jason their dinner. 

Bruce looks up at him. “What?”

“Oh, was that too vague? I meant to imply that he is not eating. At all.”

Jason groans and drags his hands down his face. “Whatever,” he says. “Let him starve if he wants to, who cares?”

Bruce frowns as Alfred ladles out the goulash onto his plate. “Did you try sending him candy?”

“Indeed, Master Bruce. He returned it untouched, just like he returned everything else.”

“Let him do whatever he wants,” Jason argues. “He’ll crack soon enough, and if he doesn’t, well, big fucking loss.”

“Waiting him out won’t work,” Bruce mutters. “I know exactly what he’s doing.”

There is a pause, but Bruce doesn’t register it until Alfred coughs politely. He blinks and looks first at his surrogate father, then at Jason. They’re both staring at the fork in his hand.

It’s not until he looks down at it too that he notices he’s been gripping it so hard he’s bent it out of shape.

 

***

 

It’s not an apology, as Bruce tried to explain to Jason before Jason stormed off in a huff murmuring “Can’t fucking believe this.” It can’t be an apology when Bruce still maintains he hasn’t done anything wrong. 

Hot butter melts between the cracks of the two buckets and drips onto his fingers; Bruce holds the popcorn away from his shirt as he waits for the metal wall to slide open. 

“Waiting for Lakeisha’s go-ahead, Sir,” Carter explains. “We told the clown to stand by the far wall where we can see him going in.”

Bruce nods. “Sensible.” 

“Are you absolutely sure there’s nothing in your pockets?” Carter insists, even though he gave Bruce a thorough pat-down not two minutes ago. “Not even a pen or a paperclip? I’ve seen the bastard kill with less.”

“Positive,” Bruce assures him with a smile. “See, I’m not even wearing a tie.”

“I’d feel much better about this if the Bat was here to supervise,” Carter mumbles, patting the communicator at his belt. 

“I’m sure he’ll be watching from wherever it is he hides in daylight. Now how about that door? I’m getting butter all over my good shirt.”

Carter is not amused; even when Jones greenlights the operation from the control room he hesitates before entering the code, and his dark brown skin seems to turn pale when the doors groan open. Bruce’s heart skips and then picks up the pace as Carter tells him to follow him inside, but he keeps his face open and vulnerable, and trains it into an embarrassed smile when he meets Joker’s eyes from across the room.

“Well,” he offers, clearing his throat for added theatricality. “Hello. Good to finally meet you properly.”

Joker, as has been promised, is standing by the windows, too far from Bruce and Carter for any violent attempts to go undetected. He’s dressed casually for a change, in a bright yellow t-shirt and purple sweatpants with his feet bare, and if anything, it makes him look even skinnier — sharper, more gaunt, even gangly with his jutting elbows on display — but no less dangerous. He isn’t smiling. Instead his eyes search Bruce’s face with such focused intensity it makes the hair on the nape of Bruce’s neck stand on end. 

“Just checking up on you after all the… unpleasantness the other day,” Bruce says. He puts the popcorn forward like a peace offering, or maybe a shield. “I thought you could use a distraction. Let’s see, we have…” he pretends to take a moment to think, “ _A Night at the Opera, The Cocoanuts, Horse Feathers_ and _Go West_ , or if you prefer something else there’s also some Chaplin and _The Three Stooges Collection_ , and —”

He doesn’t miss the way Joker’s eyes flicker, and the emotion that glimmers across his face is too rapid, too bright to pinpoint, like shadows thrown across the room by the flutter of a moth’s wings against a lightbulb. Then, he does smile. To a casual observer it might look innocuous, perhaps even childlike, especially when he claps his hands and twitters, “Ooooooh, is this a movie date?” 

Bruce can read him better than that now, and he knows: nothing is yet forgiven.

“If you feel like it,” he says, still smiling. “You do like classic comedy, right? That’s what they told me. The popcorn was a shot in the dark.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Joker assures him eagerly, forgetting about Jones’s instructions and leaping onto the sofa. “I want to watch all of them, Brucie, all of them!”

“Looks like you’re feeling better,” Bruce says, smirking, and then he ignores Carter’s warning glare and comes over to the sofa to take a seat on the other end of the couch, a nice, respectable distance from Joker.

“Sir, the handcuffs…” Carter starts.

“I think we can probably do away with the handcuffs this time, can’t we?” Bruce suggests, turning to Joker. “We’ll have a nice quiet afternoon watching a movie or two without any trouble, isn’t that right?”

“Oh absolutely,” Joker assures him sweetly, batting his eyelashes. “I’ll be good, I promise. Besides, if I wanted to, I could easily brain you _with_ the cuffs, or use the chain to strangle you, or —”

“Thank you, you’ve made your point,” Bruce parries, and of course he’s well aware of all that; that’s why he didn’t want the restraints in the first place. If he’s going to be confined to a room with Joker for any extended period of time, he’d much rather Joker was unarmed, and Joker has proven time and again that in his hands, restraints _are_ weapons. “So,” he says, making himself comfortable on the couch and putting the popcorn buckets on the floor by his feet, “let’s say two movies today? What do you want to start with?”

“You’re not going to give me the popcorn?”

“Ah.” Bruce gives him a sunny smile. “Not yet. I heard you haven’t been eating and in your state the popcorn will only upset your stomach. You need to eat some soup and bread first.”

“But,” Joker frowns at him, “you brought two.”

“Yes. And as soon as you eat the delicious soup my butler has prepared for you, you can have some.”

Joker’s frown turns stormy as his lips plunge into a petulant pout; he crosses his hands across his chest and angles himself away from Bruce. “The food here doesn’t agree with my delicate constitution,” he murmurs. “Makes me all… drowsy.”

Yes, Bruce had a feeling this would come up sooner or later. He sighs and promises, “That won’t happen again. I’m gonna make sure they inform you next time they want to give you anything.”

“And what about our beloved flying rodent friend?” Joker asks, still scowling. “He fine with you coming over without him playing Caped Chaperone?”

Bruce meets his eyes, unflinching. “The Batman isn’t here.”

They look into each other’s eyes for perhaps a minute or so, and then Joker sits back, stretching his legs in front of him, and cocks his head at Bruce. “No,” he allows, “I suppose he isn’t. He’s probably out there somewhere, though… listening, eavesdropping with those pointy little ears.”

“There’s very little I can do about that.”

“Ha!” Joker lets out a hoarse bark of a laugh, then winks at Bruce. “Let him peep in on our little date if that’s where he gets his bat-kicks. We’ll have all the fun, you and I.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “What makes you think it’s a date?”

“Let me pretend, handsome. Otherwise I’ll be so rusty when I get out I won’t be able to charm my way into a bus, let alone somebody’s knickers!”

The attempt at manipulation is transparent, but Bruce still smiles because this is the first time Joker’s mentioned a life beyond his rooms. He also used “when” this time. And that is part of his manipulation too, no doubt, but it’s still hopeful, and Bruce settles in a little more easily on the couch.

“Fine, you can pretend it’s a date if you want,” he allows, “so far as you keep to your end of the couch.” 

“Hands to myself, got it, Brucie. Hey, did you know there’s a lot of words that rhyme with Bruce? Spruce. Deduce. Apple juice. I even made up a little rhyme for you. Wanna hear?”

Bruce blinks. “I…” 

But Joker is already in performance mode, jumping to stand up on the couch and gesturing dramatically. “My good friend Bruce is strong as a moose, but, alas, somewhat obtuse. His pants, y’see, only come loose when a kitty-cat naps on his caboose. A moment of truce did request my friend Bruce, a thought that to me seemed rather _monstrueuse_ , but so sweetly he coos, and so cute his excuse, that I can’t help but BEG for his abuse.” 

His teeth glint cruelly as he stretches his painted lips in a victorious grin. He sketches a deep bow, every inch as scathing as his words, and holds the position, waiting.

And Bruce… Bruce is lost for words. His mind tries to scramble for them, but it keeps running into a wall, erected by that one final word. 

Abuse. Abuse.

And God, that makes him _angry_. Angrier than the obvious dig at Selina, angrier than all the mock flirting could ever make him feel, because seriously, abuse? Bruce could show him abuse, that grinning, self-aggrandizing piece of _filth_ —

But the word makes something else stir in his gut, too. Something far sharper, far colder, which helps him keep a lid on the anger. Something he simply doesn’t want to accept.

He won’t let the clown guilt-trip him. No fucking way.

“The rhythm needs work,” he manages eventually, and has to clear his throat immediately because the words scratch on the way out. “Also there’s a z sound in _monstrueuse_.”

Joker looks up. “What?”

“The word _monstrueuse_ ,” Bruce points out, enunciating it carefully. “It ends on a z sound, see?”

“I know. _J’ai pris quelques libertés artistiques, mon chéri, mon trésor_ ,” Joker refutes, waving his hand carelessly and folding his long legs under himself once again. The process is rather fascinating, seeing just how much sheer leg Joker has to fold, and Bruce is momentarily distracted until Joker coughs to get his attention again.

“I didn’t know you were a poet,” he tries.

“Poetry and comedy are intimate bedfellows, bay- _baaaay_! Didn’t you know? And what was that about my rhythm?”

“Well, it’s a bit… shaky, isn’t it? Could be tighter.”

“Oh, everyone’s a critic.” Joker crosses his arms protectively over his chest, sticking his nose in the air. “As if you could do better.”

“All right,” Bruce allows, despite that nagging little voice that urges him not to back out of the challenge; no way in hell is he getting himself into a poetry slam against Joker. “You’re right, I couldn’t. So how about you pick a movie and we get on with it?”

“God yes,” Jones says through the speakers. “Please. Let’s get this over with.”

Carter snorts. Joker grins and starts rocking back and forth as he sits cross-legged on the couch.

“Let’s roll _A Night at the Opera_ then, please,” Bruce says, addressing the closest camera. 

Joker claps and lets out a delighted _oooooooh_ sound when the panel on the wall between the tall windows moves out of the way to reveal the screen they’ve been using for Joker’s video therapy sessions. It blinks into activity just as the automatic curtains block out the sun and the lights in the parlor dim, and Bruce is acutely aware of Carter’s presence behind them, sharply watchful, even as he tries not to steal glances at the picture of whiteness mixed with garish color he can see out of the corner of his eye.

Silently, he picks up one of the popcorn buckets from the floor and grabs a greasy, buttery handful.

The movie starts.

And Joker knows the entire thing by heart.

Of course he does, Bruce muses, munching on popcorn as he tries to tune out the sound of Joker acting out all the scenes along with Groucho and company. Bruce should have expected that. He himself can recite most of the Zorro movies — though of course he’s never put that to the test since that night in Crime Alley — and now that he thinks about it, there’s a good chance Joker will know all the lines of every other classic comedy movie Bruce can offer. 

Behind them, Carter is barely holding it together. From how the man twitches and grits his teeth, it’s obvious he’d like nothing more than to gag Joker, or better yet, knock him out entirely. Bruce knows he should be feeling similarly murderous, and maybe that’s exactly what Joker wants.

The thing is, though, Bruce… doesn’t. It’s only mildly annoying instead of infuriating, and some of Joker’s takes on the dialogues are actually quite… amusing. 

Not that he would ever admit that to anybody, including under torture. But still.

“Ha ha ha!” Joker laughs along with Fiorello, and actually jumps to his feet for this part, turning to Bruce with his arms thrust up. “You can’t fool me! THERE AIN’T NO SANITY CLAUSE!”

“Sit _down_ ,” Carter growls. Bruce isn’t looking directly at him but from the corner of his eye he can see movement, and guesses Carter’s reached for his baton. 

“Sorry, got carried away for a bit here,” Joker sings, reclaiming his end of the couch. “It’s my favorite bit.”

Bruce sighs. He thinks he has a pretty good idea why. 

“Though I suppose good old Jimmy Gordon might disagree,” Joker whispers, and it’s like someone’s dumped a bucket of ice-cold water down Bruce’s shirt — just like that he’s disassociated, Wayne blinking out of him in a single heartbeat, and it’s Batman staring wide-eyed at the greyscale figures moving about the screen, and they’re blurring, and all he can really see is Jim, stripped naked and collapsing into his arms with tears streaking down his face.

“Don’t,” he says. He isn’t sure if he’s talking to Joker or himself.

He doesn’t turn to look at Joker. He doesn’t dare. Heat surges up to his fists and crowds against his fingertips, and if he did turn, if he spotted even a hint of a smile, he knows he would lose control. 

“Don’t,” he repeats.

Joker is silent. There’s a tense three seconds, three rapid heartbeats, where the world hang in a strange no-man’s-land, suspended between truce and aggression, and Bruce knows, just as he knows his own two names, that right now it could fall either way. He knows which one they both want. He knows which one they can’t allow, because if they do, everything, all of this, is over.

He has no doubts that Joker has sensed his transformation, that he knows he’s sitting next to Batman now and not Bruce Wayne. He could choose to attack. He could choose to — dance, to retrace their old steps, right here, right now. 

He wonders if Joker realizes how important this moment is. He wonders if Joker wants — whatever this is — enough to keep it going at the expense of whatever sits there coiled tightly inside of him just as it coils in Bruce. He wonders if _he_ does.

He wonders if that’s what the line about Gordon was meant to prove — that Joker can tease Batman out of him with only a few words. Maybe Dick was right. Maybe, in a way, it really is a power play.

And then the three seconds stretch into four, then five, then into minutes, and the moment is gone, and then the longer they sit there keeping words in the more impossible it becomes to ever let them out. 

And then —

“Pause it,” Joker says quietly after about fifteen minutes of existing in this strange between-state. “I think I’ll have that soup.”

Bruce breathes out. He can feel Wayne pressing forward until he pushes Batman out of his skin entirely, and along with him, the hot ache in his heart begins to steam away to leave behind the usual, more manageable, dull pain Bruce doubts will ever go away. Time resets, seems to rush back into place. He can hear the movie still going, which is strange because he’s sure he hasn’t heard a single word. He gestures for Carter to give the orders, and they wait for the soup in a silence that doesn’t feel alien anymore even though Bruce would never call it comfortable.

“Back with us, sweetie?” Joker whispers.

“Don’t talk about Jim Gordon.”

“I can’t promise you anything of the sort, you know that.”

“Try.”

Joker appears to consider this. Then he smiles, wide enough that Bruce can see it in his peripheral vision.

“I do like you, Juicy Brucie,” he says. “I wouldn’t mind you visiting from time to time instead of the big guy, if… If Batsy won’t mind me two-timing.”

Bruce sighs. “We’ll see.”

“He still has to keep coming, of course.”

The dumbwaiter bell rings. Bruce rubs his temples. “Eat your soup.”

Astoundingly, Joker does, standing up to retrieve his dish in silence and then sitting back down with the tray on his lap. He looks into Bruce’s eyes as he guides the first spoonful of Alfred’s signature tomato cream soup into his mouth and keeps holding eye-contact as he swallows. 

“Mmmmm” he says after a moment. “Your Jeeves really knows his stuff.”

Bruce nods, allowing the corners of his mouth to climb. “That he does,” he agrees. “Don’t eat too quickly. Can we get the movie rolling again?”

Jones restarts the picture and this time Joker is quiet until the end, eating his soup with bread and then reaching for the now-cold bucket of popcorn by Bruce’s feet. When they play _Go West_ next he doesn’t resume his act of following the lines, but limits himself to laughing, and when the reminder to take his medicine goes off in the middle of the movie he meekly stands up and takes the pills without any urging.

It feels like a success. Bruce isn’t quite sure it is, yet.

But he’ll take what he can get.

 

***

 

“You’re being way too soft on him,” Jason complains when, one week later, Bruce gets ready for another movie session.

“It’s working,” Bruce argues. “He’s opening up.”

“He’s using that as a new way to try and piss you off.”

“He just needs attention. If I don’t give it to him, he’s going to regress out of spite.”

“For that to happen there’s gotta be progress in the first place.”

“There _has_ been progress.”

“Oh yeah? Like when he drew all over the walls of the gym last night?”

“He needs distractions.”

“Have you _seen_ some of the stuff he drew? There was a fuckton of bats. Just sayin’.”

Bruce ignores him and waits for the microwave to bing.

Jason watches him for a moment longer and then points with his finger at Bruce’s jacket. “The fuck you wearing that for?”

Bruce’s eyes widen. “What? It’s just a jacket.”

“It’s your _nice_ jacket. It’s one of those you usually wear to Wayne Enterprises shindigs.”

“Is it?” Bruce turns away to watch the popcorn. “I didn’t notice.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Jason throws his arms up in the air and stalks out of the kitchen. “I’m taking the Harley,” he yells over his shoulder. “I really don’t want to be anywhere near here for the next three hours because frankly you two are disgusting. Just don’t expect me to mop your remains off the floor when he guts you.”

“That’s what I’m paying Alfred for,” Bruce murmurs, then does a quick sweep of the kitchen to make sure Alfred isn’t anywhere within earshot.

Then he takes the popcorn and visits Joker as Wayne again, and he doesn’t quite laugh at Joker’s interpretations but he does smile. 

When Joker reaches out to steal his popcorn, Bruce doesn’t stop him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa, that was a tough one. Many thanks to the lovely **mitzvah** for all the help with brainstorming and the wonderful ideas, which helped me hammer this jumble of a chapter into something more or less coherent. I'm still not entirely pleased with it but I don't want to make you wait any longer, so there it is! 
> 
> In other news, make sure you check out the BEAUTIFUL illustration of the panic attack scene from chapter 2 [by the super-talented joons](http://joons.tumblr.com/post/138700108680/he-keeps-counting-makes-breaks-for-breathing) \- it took my breath away. 
> 
> Warnings for some canon-typical violence at the beginning of this chapter, as well as self-stimulatory behavior (including self-harm) on top of the usual ugliness. Joker also makes some pretty gross jokes about non-con in the first scene he appears in, so watch out for that. 
> 
> Enjoy and please let me know what you think!

Harvey is expecting him. Gunfire rains on Bruce when he crashes through the window into the dingy warehouse where Harvey holds temporary court, and goons rush him even before all the glass scatters to the floor. Bruce does his best to dodge the spray of bullets as he makes short work of the goons, and kicks the gun out of Harvey’s hand before tripping him and pinning him to the floor face-down.

“I’m taking you back to Arkham,” he growls, tying Harvey’s arms behind his back with the rope from his belt.

“You idiot!” Harvey trashes under him, trying to reach the knife in his sleeve which Bruce swiftly intercepts. “You have no idea what —”

“Quiet.” Bruce presses his knee into Harvey’s back until the man stops moving. “The police are on their way. Tell me where you took the Joker’s men.”

“The hell do you care?” Harvey spits out onto the dirty floorboards. “You should thank me! That’s a dozen of those damn clowns less on the streets!”

“Where,” Bruce’s knee digs deeper into the hollow of Harvey’s back, “are they?”

“Probably at the bottom of Gotham River by now. They weren’t a very smart bunch. Or very lucky.” 

Harvey laughs, a hoarse, quietly horrible sound that feeds straight into the tight, angry coil in Bruce’s stomach. He twists Harvey’s arms behind him until until he hears them crack, until Harvey groans with pain. 

“That wasn’t very smart,” Bruce tells him.

“What, you’d rather that scum run amok?”

“I’d rather they serve out their sentences in Blackgate.”

“The rest of them still might, if you can beat the others to them,” Harvey pants through a cruel smirk. It stretches the scarring on the left side of his face into something straight out of a nightmare; Bruce wishes he could see the other side too. The reassurance that he’s talking to Harvey Dent as well as Two-Face would go a long way to help him keep the anger in, where it belongs.

“What others?” he snarls, bearing down on his captive. “Cobblepot? Black Mask?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Harvey’s smirk curves, the corner sharp like a pointed blade. “Say, where’s the clown?”

Bruce says nothing. He keeps Harvey pinned until the wail of the sirens finally struggles through the restless silence of the Dixon Docks. 

“You got him, don’t you?” Harvey presses. “You got him locked up somewhere underground? Or did you finally come to your senses and put a bullet through that demented green head?”

Bruce grits his teeth. “Shut up.”

“Tell you what, I’ll cut you a deal. You tell me where the clown is and I might just let slip something about my esteemed colleagues that will definitely catch your attention. Whadya say?”

“No,” Bruce snaps. 

“But you won’t deny you got him.”

“Why are _you_ suddenly so interested in the Joker?” 

“He stole some of my best men,” Harvey mutters, the smirk wiped clean in a blink. “He messed with their heads and snatched them right up from under my nose. Did the same to the others, too. Stole whatever he damned well pleased, men, territory, jobs, guns, whatever. He’s gotta pay. They all do.” 

“But you waited until he was out of the picture before you started gunning for him. That’s real brave, Harvey.”

Harvey snarls, the sound raw and feral as it makes it through the ruin of his mouth. He tries to struggle. Bruce holds him still and doesn’t give an inch, until Harvey asks, “He really isn’t coming back this time, is he?”

“It doesn’t concern you anymore.” 

Harvey huffs and deflates under Bruce. “Doesn’t matter anyhow,” he murmurs. “Sooner or later we’re gonna snuff him out. You can pass that on to him, with compliments. Tell him party’s over.” 

He spits. When Bruce hauls him to his feet he goes willingly enough, and doesn’t try to break free when Gordon’s men barge in and cuff him.

Bullock is just about to slam the police van doors on him when suddenly, Bruce’s ears are impaled on a blade of all-too-familiar noise — the white-hot bang of an explosion. The ground shakes under their feet. Around him, police officers shout and fall to their knees, expecting waves of flame to rush them, but when Bruce looks to the sky he sees the blood-red haze of fire licking the skies further down the bay.

“It’s the Tricorner Yards!” he calls to Gordon, who follows the direction of Bruce’s gaze and nods, his face painted in stark grim lines. 

“Batman!” Jason calls into the comm, breathless. 

Bruce jumps to block the van with his own body to make sure Harvey cannot escape in the commotion, and even as he does two more explosions go off one after the other, painting Gotham river in pulsing swathes of red and orange. “What’s going on?” he demands. 

“It’s Black Mask’s men,” Jason shouts into the link. “They tried to break into one of the warehouses, said something about Joker’s money, and then, I dunno, they must have tripped a wire or something because suddenly this carnival music started to play and there was a recording with Joker babbling nonsense and then the warehouse exploded and —”

Bruce curses under his breath. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, I kept my distance, but a lot of the thugs got caught in the blast. Can’t see much through all the smoke.”

“Stay where you are,” Bruce orders. “I’m coming.”

“The hell is going on out there?” Gordon demands.

In the van, Harvey laughs. “Gotta give it to the clown,” he barks, “he’s a mean hand at booby traps. So, which sucker was dumb enough to barge right in? Please tell me it was Falcone.”

Bullock slams the van doors on him with a bang which does nothing for Bruce’s ringing ears.

“Get an ambulance,” Bruce tells Gordon, getting ready to leave. “There might be people caught in the rubble.”

“Tell me what’s going on!”

But Bruce is already scaling the nearest crane, asking for Jason’s precise location. There could be survivors — there’s not a moment to lose.

There are five, in the end; Bruce and Jason manage to save three of Black Mask’s goons from the ruins and the rescue workers uncover two more. They’re all in bad shape and two are headed straight for intensive care. Jason said he’d seen eight go in and Bruce keeps searching for the remaining three until it becomes devastatingly clear there’s nothing left to look for other than grisly body parts and bloodstains smeared over the wreckage. Black Mask himself is, naturally, long gone — apparently he had the sense to stand well away, clear of any danger, as he sent some poor unlucky bastards to their deaths.

Bruce vows to go after him next.

“You gonna tell the clown about this?” Jason asks quietly as they watch the GCPD move around the wreckage. 

Bruce shakes his head. “No.”

“You could just ask him about the other hideouts, you know. How to diffuse the bombs. Where he keeps his stuff. He’s not gonna need it if he’s bent on going clean like you say he is.”

“No.” Bruce squares his shoulders. “He wouldn’t tell us anyway and he doesn’t need to know he’s taken lives even when he’s in captivity. It will only set back his therapy. We can figure this out on our own.”

Jason looks like he’s about to protest, mouth settling into that stubborn line which never fails to put Bruce on the defensive, when Gordon calls him over. 

“Figure it’s another trap,” he murmurs when Bruce stands beside him over a music box guarding a trapdoor in the floor, half-buried under the rubble. Gordon looks like he wants to kick the toy to smithereens, or maybe go and find a quiet spot to be sick. His skin tinges faintly green in the glow of the flashlights.

Bruce bends over the music box and nods. “It’s a trap all right,” he judges. “I’m going to need time to figure this out.”

“Fine. I’ll secure the perimeter. Tell me what you need.”

“Time,” Bruce says, “and no interruptions. Keep your people out of the way. There may be more explosions.”

“Sick bastard,” Gordon whispers, and Bruce doesn’t miss the way his voice catches and trembles on the last syllable.

He grits his teeth and gets to work.

It takes hours, but finally he manages to diffuse the explosives in the music box and dismantle what he hopes is all of Joker’s rather ingenious booby traps; even so, he descends down the dark, dusty, cobweb-strewn staircase fully expecting the darkness to spit foul green venom into his face.

There’s no venom. Neither is there much of anything else.

What Bruce gets for his trouble, besides lungfuls of smoke and dust, is a single playing card waiting for him on the floor, a Joker of course, and it’s not even coated in laughing gas — Bruce’s scanners confirm it to be nothing more but harmless cardboard. He picks it up. The front is plain; the back boasts a simple “HA HA HA” written in red lipstick.

Bruce stares at it for a long time before he carries it up to Jim.

“What the — ?” Jim’s eyes are wide and cold as they stare at the card in Bruce’s hands. He doesn’t move to take it. “You didn’t find anything else?”

“No. There _is_ nothing else.” Tension pulls Bruce’s jaw tight. “That’s supposed to be the joke, Commissioner. All this effort for nothing.”

Jim shakes his head. “How the hell did he manage to set this up? He was locked up at Arkham before you —”

Bruce is glaring behind the cowl. “I don’t know.” 

But he fully intends to find out. 

 

***

 

He doesn’t let himself forget about the explosion and its victims when he visits Joker as Batman. He keeps himself from asking questions even so; Joker is more than intelligent enough to read between the lines and the last thing they need now is his bloodlust rekindled by the news.

That doesn’t mean Bruce is any less angry. And Joker notices. He always does. 

“Say, what crawled up your delicious bat-butt and died?” he asks the following morning, stretching his long legs under the table as he lets his deep maroon dressing gown slip from one bony shoulder. Then he laughs. “I do hope nothing did in the literal sense, for my sake as well as yours. Did it?”

“Stop that and deal.”

Joker’s smile is altogether too knowing as he shuffles the cards with just one hand, flashy, much like the street artists in Newtown. “Rough night?” he asks as he deals. “One of my delightful friends giving you trouble?”

There’s a twinkle in his eye, a keenness that goes deeper than just his need for amusement. Bruce ignores it. They haven’t given Joker the privilege of keeping up to speed on the goings-on in the outside world and Bruce isn’t about to volunteer anything, especially not about last night. 

“Oh very well, I’m just gonna make something up on my own,” Joker sighs when it becomes clear Bruce won’t budge. “How’s about we make a game of it? Eh? Hot an’ cold. Stop me if I get too close. Humor me, darling! Was it aliens?”

“One game at a time, Joker.” Bruce accepts his cards and studies them.

“Did the aliens have tentacles?”

“Shut up.”

“Oooooooh, is that why you’re so stiff? Did the tentacles get where they weren’t supposed to?”

“It wasn’t aliens,” Bruce snaps. 

Joker laughs. When he starts to guess again, Bruce drops the cards and leaves. If he stayed another minute longer he _would_ snap and punch the smile right off Joker’s face, and he has a grim feeling Joker knows.

 

***

 

At night, the anger pushes him to work harder to make sure no other mobster makes the mistake of recklessly triggering any of Joker’s other traps. Not that it’s likely; word spreads fast in Gotham’s underworld and after Black Mask’s blunder, the other criminals are bound to be much more careful. Still, Bruce has his work cut out for him if he wants to beat them to Joker’s old hideouts, and he runs both Jason and himself ragged each night chasing leads and collecting Joker’s bedraggled strays to drop them off at Central two or three at a time. 

The bombs, when he finds them, are a devil to diffuse. It takes infinite patience and rock-steady hands to get anywhere close to the hideouts in the first place, and then Bruce has to be careful about the smallest gestures, even his own breath, because the sensors look to be sensitive enough to react to a feather’s brush.

And then, of course, after the hours it takes him to deal with the bombs, he gets the _real_ joke: each of the three hideouts Bruce has managed to track down so far are as empty as the first one. 

There’s nothing under the floorboards; nothing in the basements. No hidden chambers or safes, no underground passages, no disguised buttons to surrender treasure caches. All Bruce inevitably finds under the second layer of security is a single Joker card waiting to be picked up, the relentless “HA HA HA” meant not to kill but to humiliate.

Bruce knows the punchline is meant for Joker’s crime boss competitors, not for him. He still crumples the card in his fist every single time until the grotesque painted visage doesn’t resemble anything remotely human. 

“Where do you think he’s hiding the real stuff?” Jason asks, standing next to Bruce in yet another abandoned red-herring dump. 

“We don’t need to know that,” Bruce mutters. 

“So why the hell are you so angry?”

Bruce doesn’t reply. He starts back up the stairs. “Let’s go.” 

Jason and the police help him spread the word down the arteries of Gotham’s underbelly and Bruce hopes it’ll be enough to deter the smarter mob leaders, at least for a while. It does buy him more time to discover some of the other hideouts and Gotham seems to be enjoying a temporary respite from the escalating turf wars, but he’s not as naive as to expect that things won’t go south again. The Joker has already sculpted himself into a legend in Gotham’s fanciful collective consciousness; his conspicuous absence now seems to be elevating him to, not a religious figure exactly, but something close enough for Bruce to begin to worry. It’s only a matter of time before someone comes across a clue to the real thing, or claim they did, and rumors of untold treasures just sitting about and gathering dust, ripe for the taking, are already beginning to stir down the grapevine to feed the thirst of the kind of street-level thugs who have never clapped eyes on the Clown Prince of Crime. Fear still keeps such rumors low because even those criminals know better than to be the ones to provoke the Joker’s fury should he suddenly materialize back on the scene, and Bruce banks on that fear, as well as on Joker’s reputation for unpredictable behavior, to keep things under control. 

And then Alfred shows him a tape from the evening news.

“Where is the Joker?” asks Summer Gleeson, hair and scarf caught on the wind, the pointy shapes of Arkham’s towers brooding behind her. “This is Summer Gleeson reporting live just outside the gates of Arkham Asylum, where, some sources claim, one of the cells may be once again missing its occupant. For over a year now Gotham’s most notorious mass murderer known only as the Joker has kept unusually quiet. After his brutal assault on Commissioner Gordon and his daughter during his last reported escape, we assumed the Clown Prince of Crime was back under lock and key, but now word has reached us that this may no longer be the case.”

The report cuts to a darkened room to show a figure swathed in shadow, face hidden, voice mechanically altered. “The Joker is not in Arkham anymore,” the mysterious source says, leaning away from the camera. “He’s gone. I have a family member being treated at Arkham and I overheard the doctors there talk about it during visiting hours. When I asked about it, my bro— the family member, he said it was true, that the Joker was nowhere to be seen and they never hear him laughing anymore. It’s like he’s just. Like he’s just disappeared.”

“Since then, we’ve had more anonymous sources confirming that the Joker is no longer contained in the asylum. We’ve reached out to Jeremiah Arkham and the other doctors for comment,” Gleeson says, staring somberly into the camera as the asylum looms behind her like a black ominous beast, “but they have refused to confirm or deny the rumors and barred the media from entering the institution. Meanwhile, word on the street is that the explosion in Tricorner Yards three weeks ago may be attributed to the Joker, since eyewitnesses reportedly said they heard recordings of the Joker’s laughter just before the bombs went off, claiming three lives and putting five more men in hospital with critical injuries. Police Commissioner Gordon had this to say:”

Now the report cuts to Jim, walking briskly towards a police car as the cameramen and Gleeson run to catch up with him, and the camera steals a close-up on him just as he grumbles, “I’ve got nothing to say to you on this matter so why don’t you go and find something else to blow out of proportion. Me and my people, we’ve got work to do.”

“Commissioner Gordon, is the Joker loose again? Should we fear for our safety? Why is Arkham denying us access to the facility? Have you heard from Batma—” Gleeson tries, but Jim slides into the car and bangs the door shut in her face. 

“Since the authorities refuse to provide information, we asked the citizens of Gotham to see what they think about possibly being kept in the dark about the Joker’s escape.”

“This is outrageous,” says a white middle-aged man in a suit with a prodigious silver mustache, frowning into the camera with all the self-righteous confidence being a middle-aged white man in a suit affords him. “We have a right to know what goes on in that loony bin, especially if that maniac’s concerned. My daughter almost died in one of his bombings. I want to know what the city is doing to keep us safe.”

“I was held hostage by the Joker’s gang once,” says an Asian woman, pulling her coat close around her as she darts nervous glances to the sides like she expects Joker to jump out from between the cars parked behind her. “If he’s out, I want to know so I can take proper steps to protect myself.”

“Batman should have killed that bastard ages ago,” an elderly Black lady says, giving the camera a stony glare. “Instead he lets him murder people over and over. If it’s true and he’s out again me and my family are moving to Metropolis.”

“They have no right to keep this a secret from us,” a white teenage girl tells the camera angrily while her friend nods. “We deserve to know! What if, what if he targets our school, like, what if he tries to blow it up and we’re not prepared?”

“I think you’re kinda making this up,” a young Black man murmurs, rolling his eyes. “If the Joker was out we’d know by now. That guy is incapable of not starting s***. I trust the police and the Bat know what they’re doing.” 

A smirk steals its way onto Bruce’s face before he can stop it. On the screen, Summer Gleeson maintains her concerned expression as she says, “I have just received news from the studio that Dr. Arkham is about to issue a statement on the — here he comes!” She spins, apparently alerted by the studio execs talking into her earpiece, and the camera closes up on Jeremiah Arkham stalking down the path towards the gate with two security guards in tow.

As a director of a prominent mental institution, he doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. His hair is sticking out in rebellious strands as though he tried to only perfunctorily pat it into obedience minutes ago, coffee and grease stain his white coat and shadows stand out under his eyes, visible even with the thick-rimmed glasses. The lights of the TV crew only accentuate the hard set of his brows and the surly line of his thin mouth, and Bruce feels a temporary stab of respect for Summer Gleeson for standing her ground as he advances on her like an angered spirit spat out by the architectural nightmare behind them to exact vengeance on those who dared disturb its rest. 

“Dr. Arkham,” Gleeson asks unflinchingly, “does this mean you’re available for comment? Where is the Joker?”

“Safe,” Arkham barks, stopping just before the gate and glaring at her through the bars. Deep shadows settle into the gaunt crevices of his face, making him appear small, helpless, cartoonish.

“So he’s at Arkham?” Gleeson presses. 

The doctor sighs and pushes the glasses up the bridge of his nose. “No,” he admits, and Gleeson looks like she’s about to pounce but he doesn’t let her, immediately cutting her off with, “We’ve moved him to a more secure location to continue his treatment in a place better suited to his individual needs. He is a very sick man, Ms Gleeson.”

“But hasn’t the Joker been proclaimed incurable by your own doctors not long ago? Haven’t all attempts at therapy been suspended?”

“We do not give up on our patients,” Arkham snaps with conviction which would be admirable if Bruce didn’t know any better. “We’ve been experimenting with new forms of therapy since his last escape and that is all I’m going to say on the matter.”

“Will you not disclose the Joker’s new location?”

“Absolutely not. I will not allow you to bring your media circus to his doorstep and set back over a year of progress by indulging his manias like you always do. The Joker is secure and locked up and that is all you need to know.”

“So has this new therapy been successful?” Gleeson doesn’t give an inch of ground as she sticks the microphone in Arkham’s face through the iron-wrought bars. “Can we expect the Joker to rejoin the society as a cured man?”

All Arkham gives her in response is a dry smirk, and then he turns to start on the path back to the asylum. 

“So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen,” Gleeson says, turning back to the camera. “The Joker is no longer in Arkham but allegedly still locked up, and is being treated once again. It remains to be seen how successful those new attempts at therapy are and whether or not the Joker really is as securely contained as Dr. Arkham claims. This was Summer Gleeson, reporting live from Arkham Asylum for the Gotham News Network.” 

“They kept Batman out of it,” Bruce points out after a moment of deep silence Alfred allows him to process the situation. “That’s something.”

“Frankly, I am surprised it has taken our friendly neighborhood jackals this long to get a lead on this story,” Alfred muses. “Dr. Arkham must be remarkably good at bribing and intimidating his employees.”

Bruce doesn’t comment. He already knows which story is most likely to grace tomorrow’s front pages and does not like it one bit, but at this point, unless he wants to break into every printing press in the city, he can’t stop it. The media kraken has sensed its prey now and won’t be so easily silenced. He can only hope Alfred is right and no one at Arkham will feel the temptation to earn themselves an early Christmas bonus by spilling even more to the press.

He thinks he will pay the doctors a visit again, just to make sure. 

 

*** 

 

As Wayne, he brings popcorn again, and again, and again. He doesn’t exactly _mean_ for their movie-watching ritual to become a regular weekly thing, but it sort of happens anyway, which the guards eventually accept but are none too pleased about.

“At least let us tie him up, sir,” Lakeisha Jones insists before escorting Bruce into Joker’s quarters. “My wife is only back in college thanks to one of your science scholarships. I wouldn’t want them cutting the program just because you let some maniac cut _you_.”

Bruce makes a mental note to look up her wife and see if he can do more for her even as he shakes his head at Jones, smiling rakishly. “I really don’t think that’s necessary. My guest hasn’t acted in any threatening way in the past. I would feel so awkward watching a movie with someone tied up next to me, you know?”

“Awkward is better than dead,” Jones snaps. Then she sighs, shoulders drooping. “Can I at least gag him? Just for a bit? I swear if I have to sit through another movie with him spewing nonsense throughout they’re gonna have to commit _me_.”

“I rather enjoy it,” Bruce says, and firmly doesn’t examine what percentage of that statement is a lie. 

Jones rolls her eyes. “Rich people,” she grumbles as she punches in the security code like she has a personal vendetta against each button.

Joker is waiting for him, grinning the grin that is still one of the most terrifying sights in Gotham, and asks, “Did you bring me flowers?”

“Maybe next time,” Bruce allows before claiming the side of the sofa he tries, and fails, not to think of as his. “For now, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers will have to do.”

“Ah, a pair of rare flowers in their own right,” Joker judges, some of the edge in his smile coming off. “Will you sing with me, Brucie?”

“How about we let the actors do their work?” Bruce counters as _Top Hat_ ’s opening credits roll. 

“I’ve always seen myself as more of a… transformative connoisseur.”

And he proves it a moment later, launching into his own rendition of _No Strings (I’m Fancy Free)_ which carries him all around the parlor and which sounds much more cynical in Joker’s mouth than Irving Berlin ever intended. Joker never looks away from Bruce as he performs this one; his green eyes are all at once alight with cold irony, defiance, and a deep, rueful kind of sadness Bruce has only seen there a handful of times before. 

It reminds him of a joke told on a rainy night, their reflections in puddles fracturing into pieces under the raindrops. His stomach clenches. He never looks away.

 

*** 

 

“You’re about to run out of classic comedies to placate him with,” Alfred points out as they pore over this week’s selection. He’s right — Bruce’s collection is depleting at an alarming rate. 

“We’ll order more,” Bruce says, shrugging. “And maybe he’s up for other kinds of movies too. We’ll just have to screen them first to weed out the violent ones.”

“Parental supervision,” Alfred sighs. “Why do I suddenly feel like we’ve adopted another Robin?”

“Only this one’s in his 30s,” Bruce points out, and then he pauses, because how old _is_ Joker anyway? They’ve known each other for a lifetime and a half and Bruce still has no idea.

Alfred clears his throat. Bruce blinks and looks at him, suddenly aware that he must have spaced out. To cover up the slip-up he picks the first movie to catch his eye and hands it to Alfred, who raises his eyebrows at him.

“Really, Master Bruce,” he says. “Crossdressing? After our guest made it crystal clear he would, and I quote, _gladly wear a dress for you_? You know he’s going to think you’re encouraging him.” Then his eyes narrow and his mouth plunges into an expression of almost satirical disapproval. “Are you?”

Bruce sighs and holds out his hand for the tape. “You’re right,” he allows. “We’ll go with something else.”

Alfred steps out of his reach, hugging _Some Like it Hot_ close to his chest. “Absolutely not,” he counters. “You deserve to sit there and endure every lewd comment the clown can possibly think of.”

“Why, what have I done now?” Bruce prods, amusement bubbling up in his chest and pushing through the fog of exhaustion. Alfred turns on his heel and strides out of the library, leaving Bruce with the eloquent condemnation of a single raised eyebrow, a sight which used to be downright terrifying when Bruce was all of six years old and prone to breaking priceless family heirlooms with alarming efficiency.

It’s no less terrible now and has the added power of pushing Bruce back into the skin of that six-year-old boy again. Which, if he is to be honest with himself, isn’t always so… terrible. 

He shakes off the feeling and follows Alfred out of the library. He’s about to spend another afternoon with Joker; the last thing he needs is to feel like a child. 

 

***

 

There is one good thing to come out of watching _Some Like it Hot_ with Joker, in the end. To escape the barrage of prattle — which, yes, is predictably inappropriate — Bruce was forced to seek refuge in literally any distraction at all. Which was when he first noticed that perhaps he should be paying closer attention to Joker’s hands.

Those hands, he’s realized, are… eloquent. 

He rewinds the feed by a few seconds, catches the moment he was looking for, watches it closely, then rewinds the whole thing again. There’s a chill in the cave, cold air curling against the naked skin of his hands and neck and face, and a part of Bruce is grateful for it because it lends his thoughts the stark clarity he needs to not get sidetracked by Joker’s delighted rambling about which dress from the movie would suit him best. 

Instead, he zooms in on the way Joker would drive his blunted nails over his own skin hard enough to leave angry red tracks. 

It startled Bruce the first time, especially since it happened in the middle of one of Joker’s inane monologues and he seemed entirely unaware of doing it. Once Bruce started to pay attention, though, he caught Joker at it every few minutes or so. Joker’s hands have never been capable of staying still, Bruce knows _that much_ , but he had never before that afternoon spied this typical agitation turning to self-harm, which, like it or not, is what seems to be happening now. And it’s not just the scratching. Over the course of the movie Joker also managed to pick the skin of his right thumb almost bloody — with healing scabs around the nail and picked cuticles suggesting this to be a regular thing — worried the fabric of his lime green shirt with fingers so twitchy they looked like a pair of white spiders scuttling across the fine material, and chewed on his bottom lip almost to the point of mangling it, nearly licking the lipstick clean off as though he wanted to replace it with actual blood. And that was just one afternoon. 

Bruce didn’t say anything, but he observed, and cataloged, and turned what he saw over and over in his head until he could steal time to descend into the cave alone and review the footage. The doctors have never talked to him about Joker’s propensity for what Bruce remembers is called "stimming," and if they noticed any changes in Joker’s subconscious behavioral patterns, they never told him. It could be nothing, or an act designed specifically to send Bruce off-balance. He wants to equip himself with more than just anecdotal proof from a single afternoon before approaching the doctors about it.

His coffee’s gone lukewarm. Bruce drinks it anyway and moves on from the footage of the movie-watching to skim the feeds from the last few days, reaching for his pen and notepad. 

He gets to work. 

Jason finds him hours later still seated in the cave, investigating the footage for miniscule gestures and subconscious ticks, some of them quicker than a single blink. Bruce senses his silent presence by the chair but doesn’t turn or say a word of greeting, too absorbed in what the feeds are showing him. His eyes are focused on a quiet scene from two nights ago which, at first glance, appears to be insignificant: it’s just Joker sitting on the windowsill in his bedroom, pushing his back against the wall, knees drawn up to his chest, and looking out over the rain-swept grounds. What captures Bruce’s attention is Joker’s fingers. Elbows supported on his knees, the clown has both hands pressed into the back of his neck, and he appears to be alternating between scratching across it and pressing against it in a gesture which looks disturbingly… familiar. Like a choke-hold, and yet not quite. 

And maybe it’s because Bruce has been staring at this single moment for what feels like a full hour, or maybe Jason’s presence forces him to see the scene with the fresh eyes of an outsider, but it’s then that he notices something which jolts a spark of electricity from his brain all the way to his stomach:

It’s a rhythm. 

He pauses the feed. When he swallows, his throat burns raw.

It’s a rhythm, yes, but not just any random rhythm. It’s one that Bruce _knows_.

Sharp exhilaration of purpose pushes the chill of the cave from his bones as Bruce rewinds the feed again. His eyes widen when he realizes he’s right. The forceful press-and-release of Joker’s fingers against his own neck is definitely a controlled, regular ebb and flow, timed, Bruce realizes now, to Joker’s uncharacteristically steady breath. Bruce zooms in until the screen fills with a set of slim bony fingers, and he finds himself counting under his breath as he lets the feed play out.

One, two, three. One, two, three. In — press, out — release. 

He’s breathing with the recording now, Bruce realizes. His heart, racing a mile a minute just a few seconds ago, is now trying to follow the count, and it’s calming, soothing, almost hypnotizing. For a blink or maybe two, Bruce wants nothing more than to just let himself sit there and breathe, just like the Joker on the screen is doing.

And then, finally, the penny drops. 

Without thinking, Bruce pauses the feed and then, on another screen, he searches through the Joker tapes with fingers which very nearly stutter over the keyboard. He isn’t sure he wants his suspicions confirmed or not, but a cold fist is already closing over his chest and he _knows_ , with that sixth sense you have to develop if you want to brave the streets of Gotham at night and make it to thirty, just what he’ll find.

There. He picks the scene he’s been looking for, then brings the two feeds side by side on a single screen and plays both recordings simultaneously. 

He sits back, then, and breathes out. His mind seems to rush with white noise. His fingers twitch. Cold, humid air trickles its way into his lungs — suddenly Bruce is acutely aware of its arctic fingers whispering over his naked skin. 

He watches both recordings in perfect silence as the realization slowly steams out of him with each breath, which, he knows with a curious sense of detachment, is still synced with what is going on on both screens: Joker, breathing on his own, massaging his neck and dragging nails across it to the pace of Batman’s steady counting and breathing in the adjacent video.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. _Feel. Feel my pulse. Breathe._

He’s remembered, Bruce thinks through what feels like layers of cotton. Or at least Joker’s body remembers. He breathes to Batman’s rhythm, and on the screen it looks like Batman is subduing both the Joker in his arms and the Joker on the neighboring screen.

And Bruce…

Bruce can’t seem to articulate a coherent comment. 

His eyes, taking charge while his mind is too scrambled to control his fine motor impulses, catch on the reflection of his own gloved hand on the Joker’s neck. He remembers the cords of strong wiry muscle, the throbbing tendons jumping under his fingers, the coldness he could feel even through the glove. He remembers exactly the moment when he felt Joker’s body give in; remembers applying steady pressure to that neck, stroking it forcefully, drawing circles across snow-white canvas. He almost expects to see black lines streaked by the movement of his fingers on the screen, and when he _sees_ Joker slumping against him, trying to breathe along with him, trying to follow, his fingers beginning to move against Bruce’s exposed skin —

His wrist throbs. It remembers, too. Bruce wants to scratch against the phantom sensation, to rub the memory of Joker’s questing fingers away, but his hands lie still.

He’s never watched the feed from that moment before. Even when he showed it to the doctors he let them review it with his head turned away, bent over Joker’s files. He didn’t want to see it and be confronted with what he’d done, with the conclusions he’d never wanted to draw. 

Well, he’s watching now, and the sight of both of them, pressed against one another, their hands mirroring each other against the other’s skin, it…

He gulps. The saliva gets stuck in a throat which has suddenly gone so dry it feels like swallowing through barbed wire. He can’t stop the numb, insistent heat pooling in his stomach. The itch in his wrist gets worse. He flexes the fingers of his other hand, imagining what the skin at the nape of Joker’s neck would feel like if —

“What the hell are you doing.”

Bruce blinks, letting the fingers of both hands curl in on themselves like a pair of spooked snails. He’s forgotten all about Jason.

Shit, he’s _forgotten all about Jason,_ who is standing _right there._

Bruce blinks again, hard. He struggles to reorient himself, swallows the cool dank air, focuses on the gentle hum of electricity and the sharper murmur of the waterfall. The itching in his wrist doesn’t go away but the sensory focus helps, and after a few sharp heartbeats, Bruce’s head feels clear enough that he thinks he can control his own voice. 

“Working,” he says, and the word drags out through his too-dry throat with difficulty. 

“You call that work?” Jason points to the screen. “The hell is this supposed to achieve?”

“I’ve… noticed something. I’m confirming a hypothesis.”

“By _cuddling_ him?”

Oh. Oh, so he doesn’t mean —

If he could, Bruce would have slapped himself. He needs to focus. He reaches out to pause both recordings and tries not to think that on the feed to the right, it looks exactly like that — like he and Joker are cuddling.

“That’s an old feed. He had a panic attack and I had to subdue him,” Bruce explains tersely. He almost reaches out for a last gulp of cold coffee before he remembers he emptied the mug hours ago. 

Jason sounds skeptical as he drawls, “Right.” 

Bruce ignores him. Now that he seems to be able to think clearly again, he grabs the yellow notepad and quickly jots down his latest observation, trying to convey it through as clinical and impersonal a tone as possible: “J. seems to exhibit positive reactions to external physical pressure. Self-stimulation, perhaps subconscious, with rhythm like feed #147, see: P.A. #1. Possible coincidence. Anxiety relief? Review.” He underlines _possible coincidence_ for his own benefit so his brain won’t get carried away, but if Gotham has taught him anything, it’s that there is no such thing as coincidence.

So. The facts. Either Joker is baiting him and performing just to rile Bruce up with speculation, which is entirely possible, or…

Or he relies on the memory of Bruce’s fingers on his neck, on Bruce’s breathing and his pulse, to ease some of his stress. Even subconsciously.

The thought, bright and hot, falls like a lit match onto a tender place in Bruce’s heart he never wanted to be warmed. Not by anything related to Joker. He tries to call out to the cave, to wrap its chill around himself like a cloak to stop the warmth from spreading, but it’s no use, it does anyway. Because of Joker. Because of something he’s done _for_ Joker, the man who —

No. Bruce knows he needs to stop that. That way lies darkness, and madness, and anger of the kind that won’t be quietly banished to the back of his mind. Bruce has no time for that now. What he’s just seen could mean progress, it could be critical, and he can’t discard it just because he’s too damn afraid of his own guilt to press on.

Bruce sits up straight in the chair and promptly wills his mind to clear, sending the impending panic as well as the warmth back to their drawers at the back of his brain. He’ll have plenty of time for guilt later. Now, he has work to do. 

He quickly skims over the notes he’s already made before he starts reviewing snippets of footage all over again, looking for the same rhythm in clips he’s already watched ad nauseam. He takes notes almost furiously, wrinkling paper, his heart stuttering every time he counts under his breath and finds it matching the pace of Joker’s self-stimulation and breathing control on the screens. He loses himself almost to the point of forgetting about Jason’s judgmental presence by his side all over again before the kid clears his throat and inserts himself between Bruce and the screens, his shadow thrown over the notepad.

“It’s past midnight now,” he says, his tone vague, closed-off, almost hostile. “Should I head out alone? Do you wanna spend some more quality time with Giggles here?”

Bruce glares at him sharply, then sighs and smoothes a hand over the tortured notepad. “No. Give me two minutes to change.”

“I mean I could,” Jason calls after him as Bruce heads for the bat-suits display. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account. I’m sure I can go it alone.”

Bruce ignores his baiting as he changes and activates the car. 

Jason settles into the seat next to Bruce and they silently watch as the metal portal groans open, twin rows of floor lights flickering to life on either side of the long cave passage. 

Then, as they’re speeding through the tunnel into the night outside, Jason whispers, “He’s getting to you.”

Bruce’s hands tighten on the wheel. “He’s not.”

“Yes he is. You’ve always been obsessed but this —”

“I’m working on his therapy,” Bruce snaps before he can control the frustration cloying hotly in his gut. He can feel Jason’s accusing stare boring into him and the instinct to defend himself against it is almost overpowering. _I’m not obsessed. I’m not letting him win._ It sounds petulant even to his own ears, and he keeps his mouth shut. 

“His doctors are supposed to do that,” Jason points out.

“His doctors can’t always see what I see.”

“You think you’re more competent at psychiatry than they are?”

Bruce’s teeth want to grit together. “I’m more competent at Joker than they are.”

“Yeah,” Jason murmurs after a few tense moments. “Not obsessed at all.”

Bruce minces on his reply as he drives on, Gotham waiting for them with her arms wide open.

 

***

 

Jason’s skepticism achieves one thing: Bruce refrains from visiting Arkham and accosting the doctors with his findings. Instead, he keeps observing and taking notes, and in the meantime, he has Alfred order books, journals and research papers on the subject of developmental psychology, self-stimulation, self-harm, hypersensitivity, sensory stimulation, even autism and related spectrum disorders on top of more general research geared towards criminal psychology and pathologies he doesn’t already own. If he’s going to get this invested, might as well educate himself to know just what it is that he is observing before he jumps to conclusions which may, in the end, bring more harm than good.

If Alfred wonders what’s the point of all this, he keeps it to himself; he only sighs that world-weary sigh of his and accepts his new task with a resignation that unsettles Bruce because it suggests that Alfred saw this turn coming a mile away. 

“You don’t approve?” Bruce asks, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“I’m sure my approval or disapproval will have very little effect on your involvement, Master Bruce.”

“But you don’t think I should get involved.”

“I think, sir, that if you’re going to do it anyway, educating yourself is a good idea,” Alfred answers with his typical professional panache. “Far better than rushing in blindly.”

Bruce bristles. “I don’t rush in blindly into anything.”

“I’m sure you believe so, sir.”

Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose. “Have the books delivered as soon as possible. Oh, and see if you can find anything about relieving anxiety and panic attacks, too.”

Which he really ought to have researched at the beginning of this mad venture, but then again, he didn’t really believe he’d actually _need_ any of this knowledge. 

Now, though…

Now he’s run out of excuses. It’s obvious they’re in it for the long haul. Might as well commit himself properly to make sure all of his and Joker’s efforts pay off in the end.

If there ever is an end.

“You don’t actually believe all this conventional stuff will be effective on the Joker?” Jason asks from the desk by the high windows of the library, where he’s pretending to be doing his homework. “I mean seriously. They’d have tried it at Arkham already if they’d thought it’d do any good.”

Bruce considers his next words very carefully. “They have… their own ways of doing business at Arkham,” he says, and knows that that’s putting it mildly. “They’re not the most open-minded of people.”

Jason snorts. “And you are?”

“I try to be.”

Jason rolls his eyes and goes back to his books.

 

***

 

Soon, it turns out Bruce isn’t the only one who’s decided to step up his game.

“A message for you from Dr. Mulligan,” Alfred says politely, slipping the envelope onto the desk next to Bruce’s coffee. 

Bruce looks up from the papers about Temple Grandin. “What’s this?”

“I believe the term you’re looking for is ‘letter,’ sir.” Alfred pushes the envelope closer towards him.

Bruce glares at him, more out of habit than anything else because if he’s honest with himself he’s too exhausted to put any real heat behind it, but he dutifully reaches for the envelope and tears it open. Quickly, his eyes scan the message, which turns out to be more of a list of new therapy methods and specific items to be provided for Joker for the next stage in his treatment.

“The next stage,” Bruce repeats under his breath, eyes stuck on the simple phrase. His heart seems to shrink, hold in a breath, and then expand all at once. “She thinks we’ve gotten this far?” 

“Interesting,” Alfred judges. “I’m sure I couldn’t tell the difference.”

Neither can Bruce. That’s what has him worried.

He scans the list again. At first glance it seems innocent enough, the requested items being mostly plenty of paper and multi-colored markers, and also a steady supply of crayons, non-toxic watercolors and sponges. Specific books. Anti-stress balls. More cleaning supplies so Joker can take proper care of his living space, instead of coping with rags and some water like he’s been doing so far. This is going to be a headache. Bruce knows he can’t supply Joker with anything that can be used as a weapon, so that excludes mops, brooms and anything with a handle; nor can he provide any cleaning detergents if he doesn’t want to end up with a home-made bomb exploding in his face. Joker will have to make due with water for a while yet, but maybe Bruce can give him better rags, some of those special ones Alfred uses to keep “their” part of the Manor spotless. 

Dr. Mulligan has also provided a set of exercises for Joker to perform every morning and evening — “But he needs to decide to do them on his own. Prompting the patient will only result in antagonizing him.” — and a schedule for the sleeping pills. “No more than once every three weeks,” she writes. “Patient J. has agreed to the suggestion, provided the pills are not administered to him with his food.” This comes as a surprise to Bruce — he’d been sure Joker would never agree to take the pills willingly after that first disastrous test. But apparently Joker has another caveat. 

“Patient J. requested that the pills be given to him by Batman personally, and only when he specifically asks for them.” Not exactly surprising, but it still gives Bruce pause, and he sends the condition to nag at the back of his mind as he ponders the rest.

There’s also new diet restrictions, or, as Dr. Mulligan politely calls it, suggestions. She also requests that “Patient J. be allowed fresh air every once in a while, with proper security on-site, of course.” This pulls Bruce’s eyebrows up, his mind already spinning with all the ways it could go wrong.

He _has_ promised his doctors and Joker this would happen eventually, though, he remembers. He just didn’t expect ever to get to this point. And never expected it would come so soon. 

Only, is it soon? Bruce isn’t sure anymore. Nothing about this situation so far has gone the way he expected. 

The most worrying condition, however, is the last one. 

“Batman must not be allowed to watch the tapes from Patient J.’s therapy sessions. From this point on, the sessions are strictly confidential. It is critical for the good of the patient.”

Bruce reads this sentence four times before the meaning sinks in, and then his hand wants to close over the letter to ball it up into a scrap so hard it almost begins to shake.

He hasn’t _been_ watching any of Joker’s therapy tapes. He promised as much as he gave Joker the rundown of the rules as Wayne and up until now he’d been keeping his word, fast-forwarding through the video sessions during each review of the daily footage. He didn’t try to interrogate Dr. Mulligan or any of the others about the contents of the sessions, nor did he question the guards, and Joker himself never had anything to say on the topic. Although curiosity gnawed at Bruce more often than not, he’d kept out of it, recognizing when something was beyond him.

Recognizing that he owed Joker at least this much privacy.

He won’t break that resolution now. He’s better than his baser instincts. 

Even though his baser instincts now scream at him to run down to the cave and watch each and every single one of the therapy sessions, out of sheer spite. 

He ponders the letter for a few more moments, committing its contents to memory, then manages to surrender it to Alfred without tearing the paper in the process. “Take care of this, please,” he says. “I’m assuming the new food won’t be a problem.”

Alfred accepts the letter and reads it over. Bruce can pinpoint the exact moment when his gaze rests on the last request. “Oh dear,” he says, looking at Bruce. “Now I see what brought on the pulsing jaw thing.”

Bruce forces himself to unclench his teeth, with some difficulty. “The pulsing jaw thing?”

“Yes, sir.” Alfred points to Bruce’s jaw. “You have a way of clenching it when you’re really angry, and it makes the muscles there —”

“Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce forces out even as his teeth want to clench all over again. “Just… see to all this stuff, will you? I have to get on with my reading.”

“Certainly, Master Bruce.” Alfred turns to the letter again and hums softly. “I daresay I might just order more of those stress balls than the good doctor prescribes. The Joker isn’t the only one who might benefit.”

He’s out of the room before Bruce can reply.

 

***

 

“You never told me you’ve been working on a new routine with your doctor,” he says next time he sits down to cards with Joker. He doesn’t mean for it to come out as an accusation and barely stops himself from wincing when it does anyway.

Joker catches on the undertone immediately. His eyes glint, bright even in the pale murky haze of the rainy morning outside. “Just because you’re keeping me here like a pet cat doesn’t mean I have to tell you everything.” He blows Bruce a kiss as if to soften the blow. “No need to be jealous, sweetie, you’re still my main man.”

Bruce tries to shrug off the flirting as he usually does. He asks, “So is Dr. Mulligan working out for you?”

“Eh, she’s a bit too old for my tastes but I guess she’s all right,” Joker allows magnanimously, then grins as though struck with a pleasant memory. “I can’t decide whether she’s more or less fun than good old Lancer. It only took a few choice words to set _that_ guy off the rails. The old broad is definitely more… challenging.”

The remark sits uneasy on Bruce’s mind. Joker’s attempts to manipulate his doctors are legendary and well-documented, but… “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned Dr. Lancer in the context of unprofessional behavior,” he observes.

“Third,” Joker corrects him, the fingers of his left hand tapping an irregular pattern into the table. When Bruce doesn’t react, his smile turns lewd. “Oh Batsy, you adorable prude, don’t tell me you haven’t watched the show I put on for you!” 

The two rows of Bruce’s teeth push against one another. The image of Joker spread indecently on the bed flashes in front of his eyes; Bruce firmly slams a lid on it just like he banished the feed from the main files. To put the conversation back on track, he presses, “Do you mean to imply he abuses his position?”

“You haven’t! You seriously haven’t! Why, you sweet, sweet creature, you! I’m almost offended!”

“Joker.”

“Say, speaking of doctors,” Joker says as he leans on his elbows towards Bruce, “what happened to that lovely young thing, what’s her face, the one who said her name was Harlequin?”

_Harlequin_?, Bruce wonders, before the name breaks apart into individual puzzle pieces. “Dr. Quinzel?” he asks, and finds a confirmation in the wide set of sharp white teeth Joker rewards him with. Bruce frowns under the cowl. “Dr. Quinzel hasn’t been in contact with you for months now. You’ve never asked about her before.”

“Oh, has it really been months? Huh. Must have slipped my mind.” Joker scratches his chin thoughtfully, and then, suddenly and entirely without warning, he bangs his head face-first into the table. Before Bruce can react, he’s up again, his smile a little woozy but still in place, an impressive bruise purpling on his forehead. “Yes, you’re right!” he exclaims with some degree of wonder. “Golly, how the time flies. Anyway, what happened to her? They haven’t fired her for flirting with the patients, have they? That’d be a shame. I liked her.”

“I had her taken off your rota as soon as you got transferred,” Bruce informs him. He’s still reeling from the head-banging. “Don’t do that again, Joker,” he snaps. “You could do yourself serious harm.”

“But _mooooom_ ,” Joker whines, “it helps me think! Don’t you have those little, you know, those _morsels_ , those tiny things just on the tip of your tongue, all shy and prim and refusing to come say hi? I’ve got lots. I forget things all the time. Too much clutter up in the old attic, you understand?”

“You’ve been trying to manipulate her, haven’t you?” Bruce counters, frankly refusing to follow up on this latest ramble.

“Me?” Joker laughs, throwing his head back. “Batsy, she was the one who was all over _me_! You should have seen her! Flashing those killer legs, getting all close and cosy… Oh, I could certainly have some proper fun with that one. She had an edge. I like them with an edge.”

“You mean to say she flirted with you?” Bruce demands before he can stop himself. 

Joker grins, delighted, his gaze pointed on the cards in Bruce’s hand. They’re getting crumpled. Curses crowd against the back of Bruce’s teeth as he consciously struggles to relax his grip on them, but it’s too late — the moment has already passed, and hangs between them now, suspended like fine dust on the table. 

“Now now, dearest,” Joker whispers. “Hush now. Your edges are still my favorite.”

Bruce wants to clear his throat, and doesn’t. It would feel like defeat. “If Dr. Quinzel or Dr. Lancer abused their authority over you —”

“You mean like you have?”

“ — then I need to know so I can take steps to investigate your claims and have them removed from the facility.”

“Oh, leave the blond bimbo alone,” Joker says flippantly, slouching in his chair. “If she’s lasted this long I’m sure she’s settling in nicely. She’s clever and creative and will be going places, which of course most people at Arkham don’t really like, but that only makes it better. I hope she gets to write that book she was trying to use me for. You gotta admire the ambition at the very least.”

“And Dr. Lancer?” Bruce asks, making a note to once again review the data he has on both doctors. 

Joker simply laughs. Bruce lets his gaze fall to his hands, though, and doesn’t miss the way the fingers of Joker’s left hand scratch against the back of his right. 

When Joker abruptly changes the topic to food, Bruce lets him, and he keeps observing Joker’s restless fingers. The cogs in his mind turn. He remembers a passage in one of his new books, and he thinks —

Maybe. Maybe it would work. And now is as good a time as any.

“Joker,” he says abruptly, cutting off Joker’s deranged monologue about the many virtues of strawberries. 

The clown’s eyes bear into him. They’re bright, not quite anxious yet but unsettled, restless, just like his hands are, and have been ever since Bruce brought up the doctors. Bruce stands up. He says, “I want to try something.”

Joker watches him warily as Bruce walks around the table towards his chair. When Bruce kneels in front of him Joker actually gasps, and his entire body flinches, but he falls silent when Bruce reaches out to hold both his hands firmly between his. 

He waits a beat, then starts to press, slowly, in time with his heartbeat. In, out. In, out. In, out. He watches Joker’s fingers, frozen between his, and is keenly aware of what this must look like, of what he’s allowing, of what Joker must read into their current positions.

There’ll be a price to pay later, Bruce knows. For now, his eyes are stuck on black against white. 

“Bats,” Joker whispers. He sounds breathless. Bruce doesn’t allow himself a glance at his face.

“How does this feel?” he asks instead, schooling his voice to betray nothing. “Should I stop?”

“No,” Joker says quickly, too quickly, and his fingers stiffen before relaxing in Bruce’s grip. Then he giggles, high-pitched and still breathless with wonder, or maybe something else entirely, and after a moment he says, “If you wanted to hold my hand, you only had to ask!”

“It’s not about that,” Bruce protests. “You’re restless. I want to help.”

“Warn a guy next time?” Joker laughs again and this time it’s nervous, unsure. Bruce wants to bite on the inside of his cheek, but he can’t allow Joker to see his own hesitation so instead he focuses on maintaining his rhythm as his hands keep moving, applying deep, steady pressure. 

Joker’s hands are cold. Even through the gloves, Bruce can sense it. It worries him. He wants to ask, but the moment is too fragile for that; he knows that much. He keeps pressing, and for a few precious seconds, all is silent.

Until the comm link breathes static and a guard demands, “Batman. Step away from the prisoner.”

Joker shudders like a man who’s been shaken awake. The vibrations tremble through his entire body and reverberate through Bruce’s. When he finally glances up he sees that Joker’s eyes are half-closed, heavy-lidded, the feverish spark gone to be replaced by the blackness of pupils which are blown so wide they spill out leaving only thin rings of bright green iris. They bear into Bruce, lance straight through the cowl, questing, prodding, searching. 

Bruce gives them another heartbeat, presses one last time, before allowing his hands to fall away.

His gloves still bleed the coldness of Joker’s skin onto Bruce’s own as he stands up and addresses the closest camera. “I meant no harm,” he clarifies. “It’s a way to relieve anxiety.”

“We cannot allow such close contact,” the guard counters. 

_You have before_ , Bruce wants to say. He doesn’t. He turns back to Joker, who is still watching him, one of his hands now massaging the other the same way Bruce was doing not a moment ago. His mouth is half-open, but not in a smile; instead, he looks at Bruce like he’s never seen him before. 

Bruce realizes he can’t carry that gaze much longer. He turns away. 

“Wayne will see to it that you receive everything Dr. Mulligan prescribed,” he says curtly. “Let me know when you want the sleeping pills.”

“Maybe you should take one,” Joker suggests quietly. “You don’t exactly strike me as someone who’s getting his 8 hours’ due.”

Bruce can barely hear him through the rush in his mind. His thoughts are spinning. He thinks he knows what he needs to do next.

“Don’t you worry about me,” he tells Joker, making his way to the door. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?” Joker asks. 

Bruce lets the metal wall slide closed behind him.

 

***

 

Dr. Mulligan doesn’t seem to be surprised to see him in her office as she comes in from an evening session with Nigma. 

“Hello,” she says, making her way over to the desk. “I figured you’d show up.”

“We need to talk.”

“Yes, I daresay we do.” She sits down in her chair, then swivels towards him, her rich brown eyes cold and unyielding. “The part about you not watching the sessions is non-negotiable. If that’s why you came to see me you may just as well skedaddle and save us both the trouble of an argument.”

Bruce sets his jaw and stands tall under her scrutiny. “I haven’t been watching the sessions,” he tells her as his chin tilts up.

“Good. Then I’m sure you’ll respect my wishes now that it’s so much more important.”

“Why is it so important?” Bruce demands, even though he vowed he wouldn’t. Something in her voice grates at him, the hot indignation threatening to spill past his self-control, but if the doctor senses that, she doesn’t let it phase her. 

“You mean apart from affording the patient some semblance of privacy? The next step of his therapy is very delicate,” she says, holding his gaze without a flinch. “You cannot possibly deny that you are a major influence on him. I have reasons to believe you might interfere with my intended course of treatment and I can’t have that.”

“Is that treatment likely to cause distress?”

“Most certainly. A patient as set in his psychosis as the Joker, any form of infringing on his sense of self will inevitably cause him _immense_ distress. If he experiences it, it means the treatment is working.”

Bruce takes a moment to think about it, to cross-check that against what he’s been observing. Then, under Dr. Mulligan’s questioning gaze, he says, “In that case, I have questions.”

He shows her the snippets of tapes he’s isolated from the daily feeds. She doesn’t seem surprised to see any of it, and confirms Bruce’s observations with thoughtful nods. “He’s been hiding the symptoms from me during our sessions,” she muses, “but I have noticed the signs once or twice. It was only to be expected. It’s not uncommon for patients undergoing intensive treatment with anti-psychotics to engage in self-stimulatory behavior, you know. In some it’s a nervous response, others feel the compulsion to compensate for their sensitivity thresholds being reduced by the drugs. The meds react differently with each patient and of course the Joker’s dosage is still very much experimental.”

“So you think it’s the medication?”

“Well, not exclusively.” Dr. Mulligan turns in her chair to regard him. “We also have to factor in increased anxiety resulting from his current circumstances, most notably, the significantly reduced access to external stimulation. The Joker is a brilliant mind trapped in an enclosed space with very little to do. To put it mildly, he’s bored. His mind is not equipped to handle boredom. He needs challenges, he needs excitement, otherwise I predict his nervous symptoms will only get worse and turn inward.”

Bruce narrows his eyes. “To self-harm?”

“Among other things, yes. He was notorious for self-destructive behavior when he was still a resident here, which I’m sure you’re aware of since it’s all in the files.”

Bruce nods. He is aware. It had been a habit to keep up with the files of all of Gotham’s most notorious criminals even before he’d struck the deal with Joker, and he remembers the chilling reports of Joker baiting the guards to get them to turn to violence; of his claims that the electroshocks were an erotic experience; of him banging his head and other body parts against all available surfaces, without reason or warning.

“Isn’t that just his way to stay in control of the situation?” he ventures, the frown pulling at the tight skin of his face under the cowl. “I assumed that’s what it was. A way to turn his containment into a choice, to exert control over the people around him. If only to reassure himself.”

Dr. Mulligan is silent for a long moment, regarding him with her head cocked, strands of gracefully graying black hair falling over her eyes. She tucks a wayward one behind her ear and readjusts her position on the chair before she clasps her hands together and allows herself a small smile.

“Interesting,” she says softly. “Is that how you interpret his infamous masochistic reactions during your past hostile confrontations too? Do you see them as the Joker’s way to turn the power balance in his favor when he was losing to you?”

Tension builds in Bruce’s jaw. “Yes.”

“Hmmmm.” Dr. Mulligan presses the tips of her joined fingers to her mouth. “I’m not denying that there is an element of power play to his performance. That much is undeniable,” she says at length. “But has it really never occurred to you that, on top of the psychological power struggle, he simply enjoys pain?”

Bruce is silent for a heartbeat too long. Dr. Mulligan’s smile makes a brief reappearance before she clears her throat and says, “I suppose your focus on the psychological aspect of it makes his behavior easier to accept, doesn’t it? Then you can rationalize and compartmentalize it. You’d rather not consider your fights with the Joker as something that gave him genuine physical pleasure. That’s entirely understandable.”

The implications graze something tender and raw in Bruce’s stomach. He opens his mouth. “I don’t think —”

“Of course, saying that the Joker _enjoys_ pain is entirely too simplistic,” the doctor allows. “The reality is naturally more complex than that. The tests we have performed on his skin weren’t conclusive, but they _have_ confirmed him to be hypersensitive to all sorts of physical stimuli, including pain and pleasure. We believe this to be the after-effect of the chemical bath. I have also determined, and some of my colleagues agree, that not only is the Joker uncommonly sensitive to both, he craves them. That’s a major motive for everything he does — stimulation. Distraction. Physical sensations on top of the thrill of a mental challenge. It is my belief that physicality allows him to ground himself, that it feeds his deep-sated need for experience, and the more extreme the experience the better. One could compare it to sado-masochism, and certainly the patient’s responses have an erotic undercurrent, which he himself freely admits. A bit too freely, according to many of my esteemed colleagues.

“So, not only is he bored,” the doctor continues when Bruce doesn’t make a sound, “he is also denied any forms of physicality which have sustained him for so long. On top of that, the medication dulls his senses, mellows out his responses and slows down his sensory input and thought processes, which he will inevitably construe as a threat to his very sense of self. It’s little wonder he’s experiencing increased levels of anxiety and letting it show through subconscious self-stimulatory behavior. At the very least it’s his way of regaining control of his own nervous system, providing input of his own to counteract the numbness induced by the drugs.”

She straightens her back, then, and calmly reaches out for a bottle of water. She watches Bruce closely as she takes a long sip. They sit there in silence while the doctor’s clock slices time into neatly-measured minutes. 

Finally, Bruce trusts himself enough to say, “Can we do anything to relieve some of those effects?”

“And why would we want to?” Dr. Mulligan counters easily. “All of those effects are necessary for the therapy to really take hold. We have to first deconstruct the Joker to be able to help him construct himself again. My colleagues have tried similar approaches before, but it wasn’t until now that he has allowed himself to be treated, which really does make all the difference. We must strike the iron while it’s hot, to put it crudely. It’s going to get much worse before it gets better, and you must understand, Batman, that many of his issues really are impossible to cure. At most, and this is partly what I’m trying to achieve now, we can steer him away from violence and crime and teach him to seek fulfillment through outlets which are more… shall we say, socially acceptable, but which will still make full use of his unique faculties.”

“Should we prepare for more panic attacks, then?” Bruce asks quietly.

“Most likely. Panic attacks, tantrums, violence, other forms of erratic behavior. I can provide a list of ways to deal with them for everyone who comes into contact with the patient, but once again it is vital that you do not interfere with the sessions themselves. Now,” something softens in her eyes as she leans back, “I have prepared a set of mental exercises for the Joker to work on between sessions to keep his mind occupied. In time I will also ask Mr. Wayne to provide him with crossword and jigsaw puzzles. We will be gradually increasing his access to distractions. But not yet. He needs to be made more… malleable first.”

“And what of,” Bruce tries to let the word out without the rawness in his throat trickling out along with it, “his physicality? Will you be allowing him… outlets for that too?”

“I don’t see how we can,” says the doctor with a frown. “Letting anyone touch him is out of the question. At most we can equip him with techniques to relieve some of his physical tension on his own, but…”

Bruce grits his teeth. “There’s something else I want to show you.”

A spark of interest lights up her eyes as she leans forward, sharp and alert.

She watches the footage of Bruce holding and massaging Joker’s hands in silence which gives nothing of her thoughts away, and then quietly tells him to rewind the scene three times before she sits back in her chair and starts drumming her blunt fingernails thoughtfully against the flat surface of her desk. Her mouth is pursed and her brows plunge down, but, as far as Bruce can tell, it’s an expression of contemplation rather than disapproval. He waits.

“You’ve been doing some reading, haven’t you?” she says at last. She doesn’t lift her eyes to meet his.

Bruce nods. “Yes. I wanted to test a hypothesis.”

“You’re not the first one to suggest we try deep pressure touch on the Joker,” Dr. Mulligan says. “The young Dr. Quinzel also thought it might be beneficial. Dr. Arkham shut that suggestion down pretty fast.”

Bruce’s fingers curl. “And what do you think?”

She is silent for another few minutes before finally lifting her eyes to look into the slits of his cowl. “I think the guards were right to intervene. Surprising the patient with something like that after months with no external stimulation whatsoever could have disastrous consequences, and that is not even touching on ethical considerations. I understand you have been reading about autistic patients, Batman, and there may be some overlap, but you must understand that deep touch pressure administered by actual human touch is mostly used for children. The Joker is an adult man, and your personal relationship with him is, shall we say, volatile. I don’t think I can allow any more of such… experiments. Naturally the guards won’t either. They are responsible for the patient as well as for those who come into contact with him. I suppose you may try with a squeeze machine, but please refrain from instigating physical contact with the Joker unless it becomes necessary to subdue him.”

“But the touch did help calm him down,” Bruce argues. 

Dr. Mulligan’s eyes turn cold. “Yes. Because it was you doing it.”

Bruce’s fists tighten by his sides. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, Batman, that you can no longer afford to maintain your denial when it comes to certain aspects of your relationship with the patient you would rather ignore. You have to move past it. You’ve volunteered to be responsible for him and responsibility is exactly what I ask of you now. Do not take advantage of your unique influence on the Joker to confuse him. By all means keep him company, distract him, reassure him, do what you’ve been doing so far, but you have to get over your own inhibitions and make your peace with what may be uncomfortable if you really are to be an agent of any meaningful progress. That is all I’m going to say on the matter.”

Bruce doesn’t slam the door on his way out of her office. He has a feeling Dr. Mulligan knows he wants to anyway.

Jason looks up from his phone when Bruce gets back into the car, and immediately asks, “Okay, what pissed you off this time?”

“Nevermind.” Bruce starts the engine and turns his attention to the stream of police patrol reports. “Any emergencies?”

“Not really. There was a robbery in Tricorner but Montoya and Bullock dealt with it.” He glances over his shoulder at the dark bulk of the asylum, then turns back to Bruce. “So, where to next?”

Bruce sets his teeth. “Central. I need to have a word with Gordon.”

Jason sighs, but Bruce ignores him. Dr. Mulligan’s words rattle around in his head like stray ricocheting bullets as he pulls away from Arkham and speeds along night-dusted roads, and his thoughts crystalize into purpose even before darkness reluctantly makes way for Gotham’s aggressive lights. 

He knows, in his gut, that the doctor is wrong. The touch _worked_. And Bruce can do so much more. He’d promised Joker he would work with him and that’s precisely what he’s going to do. Because Dr. Mulligan is right about one thing at least: Joker _is_ his responsibility now, and she’s right that Bruce can influence him, but that only means that he can do things for him that no one else can. 

And if Bruce _can_ , well. To him that’s only ever meant one thing.

He needs to talk to Jim.

 

***

 

He can see from Jim’s face as he explains his plan that the Commissioner isn’t exactly enthused, but then again, Bruce didn’t expect enthusiasm. He knows better than that. 

“I don’t know,” Jim says, looking away from him. “The guards are there for a reason. The Joker is a dangerous maniac and he needs to be watched constantly or he _will_ find a way to get out of there.”

“He won’t know,” Bruce insists. “No one will tell him. As far as he’s concerned, he’ll still be under surveillance 24/7.”

“You think he won’t figure it out if you start… whatever it is you plan to do to him?”

“He’ll just assume I bribed the guards. I’ll encourage this assumption. He’ll have no reason to suspect what’s really going on.”

“And the shrinks?”

“I’ll take it up with Dr. Arkham directly. He’ll agree.” After some wrangling, but he will. Jeremiah Arkham gave up on Joker a long time ago. Whatever Bruce does, it’ll be all the same to him, and once Bruce has his written permission Dr. Mulligan won’t be able to get in the way.

“That still leaves a window for him to operate without supervision, though.”

“No,” Bruce protests. “I’ll be there. I’ll make sure he stays put. And if I’m not in the room with him in person I’ll stay in the control room until the guards return.”

“What about the tapes?”

“The cameras will still be online but I’ll isolate the feeds and erase them from the regular tapes so that the guards will have plausible deniability. They won’t be implicated. I’ll assume sole responsibility.”

“Too bad you can’t give that to me in writing.” Jim sighs and lights a cigarette. Bruce doesn’t stop him. He watches silently and gives Jim time to mull it over, letting the wind press against the exposed skin of the lower half of his face.

“I don’t know,” Jim murmurs at length. “I don’t like it. This entire setup is risky as is. Too many people know about it. There’s too many ways it could go wrong. And now you’re asking me to turn a blind eye while you… while you do whatever the hell you want to the bastard.”

“You’ve allowed me to operate on my own this long because I can do things the law can’t,” Bruce points out. “Things that must be done in the shadows. Things that can’t go through official channels. This is the same, Commissioner. I believe I can actively help with Joker’s recovery and now I think I know how, but the doctors cannot know about it and neither can the guards. I must have elbow room to do this my way.”

“Your way,” Jim echoes grimly, gazing down at the traffic below. “You realize how that sounds? Like you’re gonna snap his neck or something. Like you’re gonna pummel him twice a week for an hour and expect me to sanction it.” He takes a long drag on the cigarette, his back to Bruce. “Thing is,” he whispers, so soft the words are barely whiffs of breath caught on the wind, “I really want you to.”

Bruce is silent. There’s nothing to be said to this confession.

Finally Jim throws the cigarette onto the roof and stomps on it, sharp and angry, and he snaps, “Fine. Fine, damn it. I’ll sanction it. An hour twice a week without the guards to breathe down your neck, do what you want as long as no one else gets the blame when things go apeshit. For all it’s worth, I hope it ends with him in a body bag, but I know you better than to hope for _that_.”

Bruce nods. “I’ll have someone instruct the guards.”

“I’ll do it. They’re gonna want to talk to me about it anyway so might as well make it official from the get-go. Just let me know when you get the green light from the shrinks. Do we tell Wayne?”

“None of this concerns him personally,” Bruce says quietly. “The fewer people are involved in this the better.”

“Yeah. Right.” Jim snorts, tucking his hands into the pockets of his longcoat. “Vigilante therapy,” he murmurs. “Just when I thought I’d seen it all.”

“I appreciate your trust.”

“It’s not about trust and you know it.” He sighs again. “Just make sure none of this leaks or it’ll be both our heads on the chopping block.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Bruce promises, and then he’s off, joining Jason on the neighboring rooftop and leading him on without a word towards Robinson Park. 

“Something you want to tell me?” Jason asks as they scale roof after roof, hidden in Gotham’s welcoming shadows.

“Later,” Bruce says. “I may have a lead on Black Mask’s latest operation. We’ve got work to do.”

Jason glares at him, but lets it go and follows without any more questions. Bruce knows the kid, and Alfred for that matter, will have plenty to say once they hear about the new plan, but they’ll deal with it when the time comes. He still has to secure Arkham’s permission, which might take about a week, give or take; and for now, no one else needs to know.

In the meantime, he’ll look into the squeeze machine Dr. Mulligan mentioned…

As well as into Arkham’s internal files. He has a feeling it might be time to have a long talk with some of the asylum’s employees.

Starting with Dr. Quinzel.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update! All 15k of it because I have no chill. The usual warnings apply.
> 
> Enjoy, and as usual, let me know what you think! I'm still wallowing in all the lovely feedback and it does wonders to my productivity, no joke. Thank you so much. 
> 
> Once again, extra warm thanks to [mitzvah](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Melting/pseuds/mitzvah) for being a wonderful brainstorming partner. If you haven't checked out her Matchjokes stories yet, you totally should. They are HOT.
> 
> Oh, and a note on Harley here - I went with the characterization in "Gotham City Sirens" and her solo series pre-Nu52 because I loved it and it worked best with this particular story.

Dr. Quinzel doesn’t scream when she sees Batman melting out of the shadows between her and her car in the Arkham parking lot. Instead she swears, plunges her hand into an inside pocket of her gray woolen longcoat, and points a charged taser straight at Bruce’s face. 

“I’m not afraid of you,” she snaps. 

She holds the taser with a steady hand of someone who knows how to use it, and suddenly Bruce has no doubt that she _has_ , and more than once. The fact that she is clearly more than ready to use it on him of all people already tells him more about this frail-looking young woman than the Arkham employee files ever could. 

“I believe you, Doctor,” he says quietly. “I only want to talk.” To prove his point he stays where he is, just on the edge of the puddle of light spilled down onto dirty concrete from the old rickety lamppost, and takes one measured step to the side to indicate that he is not going to stop her from forcing her way to the car. 

The taser stays aimed at his face. “Well _I_ don’t wanna talk to _you_ ,” the doctor snaps. “Get outta my way before I run you over, B-man.”

“Haven’t heard this one before,” Bruce mutters.

“Oh yeah? Well I sure as hell ain’t calling you Bats. That’s way too familiar for someone who’s out to ruin my career,” she snarls, and though her hand stays remarkably steady her accent betrays her, slipping into something much more street than Harvard. 

She moved here from Brooklyn, Bruce remembers, thinking back to her file. Another piece of Dr. Quinzel’s story coalesces in his mind. The steadiness of her hand makes even more sense. 

He says, “I’m not out to ruin your career, Doctor. I did what I did for your own good.”

“Ha! And they say chivalry is dead.” Dr. Quinzel rolls her eyes, pushing the glasses up her nose with her free hand. “Come on, B-man. Save that crap for one a’ them adoring adolescents you like to keep around so much. We both know you didn’t step in just because I’m some cute fragile lil’ doll who can’t handle herself and needs saving from the Big Bad Wolf. You just thought I was too inconvenient and you’d rather not have me poking into your so-called _methods_.”

Right. Well. Bruce _was_ going to try and do this diplomatically but the doctor is clearly determined to make his life difficult, and frankly, he has better things to do than stand there being yelled at by a frustrated young woman nearly half his age. The hard way it is. 

He watches Dr. Quinzel’s face very, very carefully when he says, “He said you flirted with him.”

Her eyes, a storm of indignant blue just a blink ago, widen, and then go very, very still. The muscles in her face freeze. Her painted mouth hangs half-open, all fight suddenly punched out of her. 

And Bruce thinks, _Damn. Joker wasn’t lying_. 

It isn’t until this precise moment that he realizes just how prepared he’d been to assume the allegation was simply one of Joker’s lies. That it was just another game Joker had come up with to rile him up, to send him running around chasing dead leads, to get his kicks and maybe make life difficult for one of his ex shrinks, a hobby of his that, Bruce knows, has a particularly long history. Perhaps Bruce had been actually _hoping_ for that. But what he sees in Dr. Quinzel’s face now is _guilt_ , and a shock of betrayal, and it’s as good as a confession, and now that he’s seen it he can’t let that slide anymore. He can’t turn a blind eye.

Damn it.

“He told you?” Dr. Quinzel asks. Unlike the hand still holding the taser, her voice has dropped, is small now, and she seems to be making herself smaller too. 

Bruce gives her a tight nod. “Yes.”

“Huh.” She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes, and then, slowly, she lowers the arm holding the taser by a few inches. “Then I guess you’re gonna go ahead and have me fired now.”

“You’re not going to deny it? It’s your word against his.”

“What’s the point? You’ve already made up your mind about me. ‘Sides, I’m not…” She trails off. Sighs. Her shoulders droop, and finally she hides the taser back into its secret pocket. “There’s a tape,” she whispers, her gaze fixed at the ground. “All sessions are taped. He knows it exists, and knowing him, he probably knows where it is. And I’m not gonna try and gaslight my way out of it, okay? Too many people have tried that on him already and I’m not like — I’m not like that. I’m better ‘n that. I know when I done wrong.” She sighs, presses her eyes closed again. Her face crumples. For a terrifying moment she looks like she’s about to cry, but then something in her expression hardens, and Bruce remembers, _She had an edge. I like them with an edge._

Bruce can see that edge now, he thinks. And suddenly he understands why Joker might have found that appealing.

Because there is steel in Dr. Quinzel’s blue eyes when she looks at him again, and her back straightens, and her chin juts out in provocation, and she has regrouped, and is ready to fight once again. “Look,” she says, “yeah, I’ve crossed some boundaries. I ain’t gonna deny that, okay?” Her accent keeps going back and forth between studied and native. She thrusts her hands in the pockets of her coat and attempts to stare Bruce down. “But it’s not what you think. It’s not like I’m some silly clown groupie with a crush.”

It doesn’t escape Bruce that the tips of her ears glow pink as she says it, though, or that she chews lightly on her upper lip before she realizes what she’s doing and stops herself. There is a lie in that statement, and Bruce is hit smack in the heart with how unprepared he’d been for this particular revelation, or for the ensuing wave of red which suddenly floods his vision. 

His fists crawl. He keeps them steady by his sides, under the cape, as he stands there waiting on the edge of light and shadow.

“I needed a way to get to him, all right?” Dr. Quinzel says, heat and challenge in her voice. “I needed to get him to trust me. That wasn’t gonna happen if I was just another white coat, just one’a them sticklers, doin’ it all by the book. A guy like him, there ain’t no book. There ain’t no rules. That’s what those crooks and phoneys here don’t understand. They think they hafta break ‘im ta get ‘im ta fit the mold and they never stop to think that maybe it’s the mold that needs changin’. Didya know a guy once tried ta cure ‘im by making him watch shitty reality TV on loop, over an’ over, for, like, at least two months before me an’ Nisha put a stop to it?” She accentuates this last sentence with a hard stomp of her flat-heeled boots against the pavement, her eyes burning. “You don’t know _half_ the shit that goes on here, B-man. I was actually tryin’ ta do good.”

“By telling him your name sounded like Harlequin?”

“It was working!” She is squaring her shoulders now, fists curling at her sides like she’s trying to fight the urge to hit him. “I was gettin’ somewhere! He was actually on ‘is way ta trust me, and he was telling me stuff, openin’ up ta me, and then _you_ —”

“He was feeding you lies, Doctor,” Bruce tells her flatly. “Taking advantage of your confidence to turn it back against you. You would have ended up as just another victim.”

“You can’t know that!”

“I have a pretty good guess.”

“Well _I_ guess we’ll never know for sure now, will we,” she snaps, crossing her arms over her chest. “Because you just had ta waltz in and ruin everything. Unless…” now the bright gleam in her eyes turns shrewd, carried on a new thought, and her lips curl into a cutting smirk when she says, “you tell Dr. Arkham to reinstate me on the Joker’s rota.”

Oh for crying out loud. “You cannot possibly expect me to let you anywhere near him after your unethical behavior.”

Color spots her cheeks just as she lets out an indignant noise, and she stomps her foot again, and she practically yells, “Unethical? _Unethical_?! You’re actually gonna lecture _me_ about unethical, when you’re the one who, who keeps him locked up day and night and won’t let him see anyone but you, and — and — you keep the cameras on him 24/7, and you don’t _ever_ let him go outside, and you control his every move and his meds and food and drink and sleep, but _I’m_ the one who’s unethical?”

Bruce’s body itches to step forward, make himself big. It yearns to be Batman. She’s not a criminal, he reminds himself, and she doesn’t know. She’s a naive youngster with a crush and an entitlement complex a mile long. He doesn’t need or want to defend himself in front of her.

And yet his mouth opens, and words tumble out anyway. “You attempted to instigate a romantic relationship with him while he was a patient in your care,” he points out through the red haze that only seems to solidify the harder he tries to disperse it. “You tried to use him as a springboard to fame.”

“That wasn’t all it was! I _told_ you, I was tryin’ ta help him! And sure, if I could get a book deal outta that then all the better because guess what, B-man, college debt is a bitch. But the thing is, _I_ am actually qualified. I knew what I was doing going in because I have the knowledge and the learnin’ and a diploma an’ I worked my ass off for all a’ that! What have you got, huh? What makes _you_ qualified to decide what’s good for him? Far as I know, all you _got_ is a history of beatin’ ‘im up!”

“Doctor Mulligan is the one taking care of Joker’s therapy,” Bruce reminds her, and doesn’t let his voice waver one inch as he faces her with all her anger and charges and accusations. “She’s more than qualified.” 

“Oh great, now you’re gonna hide behind Nisha. FYI? She hates this whole thing as much as I do, she just doesn’t think arguing against it will do any good. Well, guess what? You won’t keep getting your way much longer. In the meantime, if you ain’t gonna arrest me or help me, I think we’re done here.”

“You care for Pamela Isley now, don’t you,” Bruce says. 

She eyes him like she might eye a rabid dog, hostility still burning bright in her entire body. “Yeah? So? You gonna take Ivy away from me, too? Because newsflash, genius, her pheromones don’t work on me.”

“None of the other doctors call her Ivy.”

“I believe in other people’s right to create their own identities,” Dr. Quinzel snaps. “I’m gonna call her whatever she wants to be called. You of all people should understand that much. Now move.”

Bruce stays where he is. “Dr. Mulligan told me you suggested adding deep touch pressure to Joker’s therapy.” 

She blinks, taking a step back. Her shoulders relax a little, like the confusion is enough to make her forget about being angry. “I did,” she admits. “So?” Then, in a heartbeat, the anger is back, and she points a finger at Bruce. “You tryin’ ta accuse me of using that as an excuse to get up close and personal with him? Because it wasn’t about that at all.”

Bruce doesn’t believe her. Still, he says, “I’d like to explore that idea. I would appreciate a look at your research.”

That clearly kicks the wind out of her, and she stares at him for a full minute, blinking, before her features once again assume the acute look of someone smelling an opportunity. 

“You bring me back on board and you got it,” she says.

Bruce narrows his eyes. “No. But I may not report your misconduct.”

“Gee, you’re a piece a’ work, ain’tcha? No idea how to negotiate.” She hides her hands in the pockets of her coat again, defiant. “Thanks but no thanks, B-man, I’ll take my chances. Get away from my car.”

“I thought you said you wanted to help him.”

“Yeah, sorry, I ain’t gonna be one a’ your enablers. You got no right to keep him for yourself and do whatever you want to him, and I want no part in that if you can’t accept someone who’s willing to call you out on your bullshit.”

Something clicks into place in Bruce’s mind. The red haze shatters, and turns _cold_. 

“You were the one who alerted the press,” he realizes.

Her eyes harden. Her hand inches towards the inside pocket of her coat again. “Get. Away.”

“Why?” Bruce presses. “Why would you do something so monumentally stupid?”

“I ain’t saying nothin’. But you can’t expect to have everyone’s approval for everything you do, hero. Now move, I had a long day and a guy threw up on me and I wanna go home.”

“You can’t tell them where he is. It’ll ruin everything.”

She smirks. There’s not a trace of humor there, and once again Bruce is reminded of edges.

“Say, how about _you_ sign up for therapy?” she drawls, leaning forward. “First consultation’s free. I’d say delusions of grandeur and narcissism to start with, an’ a serious case of paranoia compounded with trust issues, plus a pathological need to prove yourself which probably stems from deep-seated childhood trauma. Anger issues and violent tendencies, obviously. A hero complex. Should I keep going?”

Bruce’s hands burn with the need to move, to do something, to reach out and shake her until she sees sense. It’s that very urge which makes him step back, clearing her way.

She’s too young. She doesn’t understand. She wouldn’t even if she wanted to, even if she wasn’t blinded by her own sense of wounded pride and jealousy.

The thought doesn’t make the cold, cold feeling go away. But it helps keep it in, and that’s… that’s something, Bruce supposes. 

Dr. Quinzel stomps past him to the car and slips inside, then bangs the door shut behind her. Before she drives off, though, she rolls the window down and glares into the shadows where Bruce still stands.

“If you really wanted to do some good around here,” she mutters, hands tight on the wheel, “you’d go for the other staff. Pummel and book the real sons of bitches who beat on the inmates and do whatever the fuck they please because they know they can get away with it, instead of wasting your time harassing _me_. But you don’t care about any a’ that, do you? You couldn’t give a damn what happens to those poor bastards after you bring them here. Just so long as they don’t break out. Well, screw you.”

“You could give me names,” Bruce tells her, but she’s already rolling the window back up and starting the engine, and speeding away, angry tire tracks trailing after her, the car spouting fumes in his face.

 

***

 

Three days later Arkham approves Bruce’s request with a curt, “Don’t make me regret this.” Jim takes care of the rest. Dr. Mulligan wastes no time unleashing a storm of angry calls and letters on the Manor, and some of the letters are co-signed by Dr. Quinzel and a handful of others, but it’s nothing Bruce hasn’t expected. The calls he ignores easily, without even a stab of remorse, but he does read the letters in case they contain something useful and archives them with the same care he archives all his resources. None of them convince him to even consider changing his mind. If anything, they, and the confrontation with Dr. Quinzel, only reassure him that he’s doing the right thing. He’s still only just beginning to seriously investigate Arkham, but even with the limited amount of time he can devote to it he’s already deeply disgusted with what he’s learning, and he figures the more distance he can put between Joker and that place the better. 

He still trusts Dr. Mulligan to know what she’s doing. But she’s one of the very, very few, and she seems to be close with Dr. Quinzel, and her insistence of keeping the sessions private still chafes. Bruce isn’t sure what to make of it. Which only makes his purpose all the clearer.

Alfred and Jason’s reactions, predictably, aren’t as easy to shake. Jason has stopped talking to him in the house altogether — which is somewhat easier to weather since he hardly ever spends any time in the Manor these days anyway — and on patrols he limits himself to monosyllabic responses. And Alfred… 

… is Alfred. He’s still the same steady, unshakable force Bruce has known and relied on since his earliest days. But he’s quieter, and his comebacks are sharper, and there’s lines drawing tight around his mouth when he brings Bruce his meals.

And that’s even worse than Jason’s ostentatious surliness. That _cuts_. Because clearly Alfred has words for him, words he doesn’t think Bruce can handle, and the worst thing is, Bruce has a pretty good guess what those words may be and he isn’t all that sure Alfred is wrong. He really doesn’t want to hear any of it.

Because he _knows_ he’s right. He’s caught that same wind of purpose which carried him when he first brought Joker here. He only needs to play this right, be smart about it, and it’ll be fine. It’ll work out. And he knows what his first move should be.

So when he gets the cold, reluctant go-ahead from Alfred before his very first unsupervised hour with Joker, he goes in as Batman without hesitation, his step assured, his heart steadfast and determined and focused like it is out on the streets. He has a plan. He has a mission. It’ll be all right.

Joker sits curled up on the sofa, reading, and his head snaps up at the sound of the opening door. Bruce meets his questioning eyes without a word. There is a duffel bag in his hand; he strides over to the sofa and dumps it by Joker’s bare feet. 

“I’ve got something for you,” he says.

Joker’s eyes go wide. He presses a hand to his chest with a theatrical gasp. “Oh my, have I missed Christmas?” Then his brow furrows, face marred with actual intense consideration as though the playful comment has made him realize something profound. His tongue flicks out to lick across his lower lip, and he massages his temples for a blink before he decides, “I have, haven’t I? Holy guacamole. I must have. There’s no snow outside, and that, my unfeeling friend, means that _you_ let me sit here and dawdle while my favorite holiday came and went, completely unmarked! Shame on you, Bats. I thought we were friends. The least you could do is let me keep a calendar.”

This is actually a salient point, and something Bruce will have to consult with Dr. Mulligan once she cools down enough to have a conversation with him that won’t involve throwing pens. It might still be too early for a calendar and there’s been nothing about it in her letters, but the possibility is there. 

Later. That’s not why Bruce is here today. He lets Joker’s Christmas-related distress wash off him and instead he opens the bag to select the first item. 

“Hand cream,” he says, tossing the tube at Joker, who catches it entirely on instinct before his eyes light on the label and his mouth falls open as he realizes what it is he’s holding. “There’s three tubes of it here,” Bruce explains. “All natural ingredients. It should last you for a few months or so.” 

He watches as Joker opens the tube with oddly hesitant fingers and sticks it up to his nose, then takes a long, long sniff. 

“Ahhhhhhh,” he sighs with relish, his eyes closing, his lips curling into a lazy, satisfied smile. “Smells like ruthless capitalist exploitation of third-world countries,” he judges, giggling. “And a bit like fresh rain.” He squeezes a tiny drop of the cream out onto his index finger, a dab of white against white, and smears it daintily into his skin with his thumb. Bruce is gripped by an absurd sense of coiled anticipation before Joker sighs again, deep and delighted. 

“ _Feels_ like fresh rain, too!” he breathes with wonder, flashing Bruce a grin that for once does not resemble a razorblade. “Good _job_ , Batsy!” 

He wastes no time massaging a heroic amount of the lotion into his hands until they gleam, completely ignoring Bruce in the process. Bruce takes the opportunity to watch his fingers dance for a bit before he goes for the next thing in the bag, some of that tight anticipation releasing as he does.

“Face cream,” he says, and puts the small bottles on the sofa next to Joker’s legs. “Foot cream. Moisturizer. Shower gel. Shampoo. Conditioner.” He hesitates on the last item, feeling profoundly silly just thinking the words, but then he gets over himself and presents the last jar, and manages to say, “Body butter. All organic. Not that it’s likely but if you try anything with them, we’ll know.”

Joker gazes at the goods at his feet, then at Bruce. His eyes go huge and quarter-dollar round. His hands are still pressing into one another, as though they can’t get enough of the new smoothness. “Do I get to keep them?” he asks in a whisper.

All at once, Bruce’s heart shrinks to the point where it hurts. He nods. “Yes. I’m not taking them away. But you have to remember —”

Joker scrambles to snatch the bottles and tubes and jars up so fast he sends the book in his lap flying to the floor, like he’s afraid Bruce will change his mind after all, like they might no longer be there if he blinks. He giggles, enraptured, and starts inspecting bottle after bottle, tube after tube, unscrewing and sniffing each one with alarming greed. Bruce leaves him to it, finding himself disturbingly fascinated, and unbidden, a thought creeps up on him from behind: _This is what a starving man looks like when you sit him down to a feast._

Immediately, a maw of guilt opens up under his feet and very nearly swallows him whole. Bruce tries to shake off the thought but it clings on like a stubborn spider, and he remembers how easy it used to be to not feel any sort of guilt towards Joker at all, or to push it away when he did. 

He doesn’t think he’d realized just how much things have changed until this very moment. Until he’s left standing here watching Joker revel in the simplest, most basic of human comforts, feeling like a benevolent master who graciously deigned to do something nice for his captive, and for a moment the thought makes him sick enough that he glances towards the sliding metal wall. 

Joker doesn’t let him plunge any deeper down that slippery slope, though; he jolts Bruce out of his dark reveries by kicking impatiently at the bag with one bare foot. “What else you got in there, Santa baby?” he demands eagerly. “The bag’s still full. Do I get to sit on your lap?”

Bruce breathes out through his nose. He closes his eyes for a moment under the cowl. Then, silently, he bends to retrieve the next thing: an enormous warm layered blanket, patterned in lavish purple and green and lined with luxurious white fur on the underside.

“Bats,” Joker gasps, dropping the jar of body butter onto his lap. “For me?”

Bruce nods. “I noticed you were cold, so I —”

“Gimme!” Joker makes a grabby motion at the blanket and Bruce lets him tear it out of his hands. He watches, the tightness not entirely gone from his heart, as Joker shoves his assortment of new fragrant goodies to the floor to wrap himself up in the blanket from head to foot, so that only his face and a few rebellious green curls peek out from the mountain of color. 

“Oohhhhhhhh,” he sighs, collapsing against the sofa’s backrest, his eyes falling closed again and staying that way. “It’s so soft. Just how daddy likes it. Oh yes, I think Reggie and I are gonna be very happy together…”

“Reggie?”

“Reggie.” 

Bruce doesn’t have a comment for that, which is probably for the best. He gives Joker a minute or two to bask in the glory of his new blanket before he clears his throat and goes for the bag again.

Joker watches him out of lazy, half-lidded eyes, his lips curling. “Oh darling. There’s _more_?”

“Yes.” Bruce retrieves the warm alpaca wool sweaters and soft silk shirts and loose pants and lays them out carefully on the parts of the backrest that the happy mountain of blanketed Joker isn’t currently leaning against. “Some new clothes for you. I noticed the ones you have are getting worn. There’s warm socks, too, and new underwear.”

Joker giggles. “Kinky.”

“You’re spitting on the blanket.”

“Reggie doesn’t mind. He’s kinky too, just like you, my leather-loving sugar daddy.” 

“It’s not leather, it’s — nevermind.” Bruce shakes his head before he allows himself to get drawn even deeper into this nonsense. 

“You’re not protesting the sugar daddy part.”

“That’s because life’s too short.”

Joker discards his comment entirely, pondering, instead, “Or would it be Brucie who’s my sugar daddy? He paid for all that, didn’t he? And he comes over for movie dates. I bet you’re jealous of our movie dates.”

That almost, almost makes Bruce smirk. “I’ll survive.”

“Survive is such a dour little word, my love.” Then, Joker perks up again, and giggles into his blanket. “If you’re gonna be bringing me panties though, can I ask for leopard print next time? And lace. They’ve gotta be silk, too. A kept clown’s gotta have standards.”

“Joker.”

“I bet Brucie would appreciate me in silk lace.”

Bruce blinks, and is glad Joker can’t see that through the cowl. He says slowly, “You’re not seriously _trying_ to make me jealous?” He doesn’t add _of my own alter ego_ but it’s there in the air between them anyway. 

Joker bats his eyelashes at him. “Why, is it working?”

And that, for a terrifying moment, makes Bruce seriously consider grabbing one of the socks from the bag and throwing it in Joker’s face. 

He doesn’t even know where the impulse came from, which is unnerving because Wayne could feign playfulness from time to time — if never actually _feel_ it — but Batman? Never. Playful does not exist in his vocabulary when he’s wearing the cape and cowl. Not to mention he hasn’t felt such ridiculous, immature urges since before the dark alley, before the gunshots and the blood and the clatter of pearls onto dirty wet ground.

The memory instantly pours cold water on a situation that for a moment felt dangerously close to unraveling, and when Bruce breathes in and out he feels more like himself again. 

It’s reassuring. It is also, inadvertently, bittersweet.

Joker is still waiting for his reaction though, so Bruce looks at him, keeps his expression blank, and simply says, “No.”

Something about his delivery makes Joker laugh himself into a coughing fit. It takes him a while to calm down, which Bruce appreciates because it gives him some much-needed time to get himself under control. He’s still unsettled, though, and doesn’t quite know how to shelf the weirdness of this moment away because he hasn’t prepared compartments in his mind for something as mundane as _feeling silly_. The Batman had never needed them until now. 

Until Joker. 

The takeaway here is probably that he’s been spending entirely too much time in the clown’s company, and Bruce wants to laugh at the irony of the situation because here he is, in the middle of executing a plan which relies on doubling down on that time rather than cutting it.

This isn’t about him, he reminds himself. This is about Joker and what Bruce can do for him. 

And, by extension, for Gotham.

He seeks refuge in the comforting familiarity of that thought and lets it steady him, and then reaches for the last few items. Wordlessly, he lays them out at Joker’s feet, one by one. 

And that, _that_ stops Joker laughing, the last of it dying in a gasp. He is staring at Bruce from his blanket cocoon, his tongue darting out uncertainly to taste the chewed-on skin of his bottom lip. 

“But I thought —” he starts hoarsely, eyes skipping between Bruce and the items at his feet. 

Bruce sets his mouth and looks into his eyes, patiently waiting until Joker’s lock on him and stay there. Then he says, quietly, “You’ve earned it.”

Joker makes a sound rather a lot like a squeaky toy someone stepped on. His throat is working furiously, Adam’s apple bobbing. He holds Bruce’s gaze for another three seconds and then his eyes dart down again, and though he makes no move to collect the modest collection of new makeup, Bruce can see his fingers twitching under the blanket. He imagines himself reaching out, pulling the folds of the blanket apart and just holding Joker’s hands in his until he calms down, like he did before, but he stops himself before the thought can blossom into urge. 

This time, he’ll wait. He’ll _ask_. He can do this much. 

“Don’t make me regret this,” he warns instead, and is surprised by how soft the words sound in the silence of the room.

But maybe he shouldn’t be. It’s no worse than thinking about holding Joker’s hands. And he has no space in his mind right now to examine _that_.

Joker looks back up at him, and blinks, and slowly, his face… rearranges itself. Muscle by muscle, like a coal painting someone accidentally smudged, the expression of uncertain wonder blurs into one of knowing, bitter, _sad_ amusement. Suddenly he reminds Bruce of a painting, though which one, he can’t quite pinpoint. 

“Oh Bats,” Joker whispers over that gently mocking, bittersweet smile. “How could I? You regret this already.”

He doesn’t wait for Bruce to respond. One pale hand nudges the blanket apart to brave the chilly air outside and touch the cosmetics with long curious fingers. He picks up the mascara first, then the eyeliner, then the eyeshadows and the tiny box of rouge. He’s careful with those, trailing delicate touches over the glossy plastic of the containers with none of the recklessness from earlier anywhere in evidence, and it’s a bit like the difference between gorging oneself on food after near-starvation and tasting the dessert once the worst of the hunger has been sated. 

He goes for the new tubes of lipstick last. His face is locked in thoughtfulness as he tests each of them on the skin of his forearm, just above the metal bracelet, and then, without raising his eyes to Bruce, he grabs one of the tubes, the brightest, most glaring shade of red of them all, and starts to draw on his own skin.

And Bruce finds himself asking, “Do you like it?”

It nudges him out of balance again, asking the question and the fact that he wants to know in the first place, and once more a sudden flare of tight anticipation pushes him to lean forward before he can catch the feeling and stomp it out. 

Joker giggles, softly. Bruce tells himself the clown has absolutely no way of knowing what he’s feeling or thinking right now.

It doesn’t quite work.

And Joker keeps him waiting, touching the lipstick to his skin with focused purpose, as single-minded in this small creative pursuit as he used to be in his destruction. Bruce watches until from the chaos emerges something like the bat-shape, its edges smeared in red.

It looks like a brand.

And suddenly, sweat beads on the back of Bruce’s neck, because he doesn’t want to see it. He wants to reach out and rub it away, he wants to wipe Joker’s hand clean and pure white so that he doesn’t have to look and see and think, and ponder, and feel so goddamn sick — 

But the thing is, he can’t seem to be able to make himself move. Or even look away.

Until, finally, Joker sighs and breaks the odd little spell they seem to be caught in, and _he’s_ the first to move. He gathers up the cosmetics and starts putting them back into the duffel bag. Startled, Bruce watches him without a word until everything sans the clothes and the blanket is packed, and then Joker stands up, letting the blanket pool on the carpet around his bare ankles.

He grabs the bag with one hand. The other he extends to Bruce.

“Come on, baby,” he whispers, the words warm on his smiling mouth.

Bruce looks at the hand, eyes catching on the angry red mess of a bat and then the cold glint of the bracelet next to it. 

“What now?” he asks.

“Just come with me. I want you to do something for me.”

“Joker, what is it?” Bruce insists even as he reaches out to take Joker’s hand.

Joker only smiles and leads him into the bathroom.

Once there, he offers no explanations, busying himself instead with the careful arrangement of his new cosmetics on any available surface. Left with nothing better to do, Bruce leans against the closed door with his arms crossed over his chest and watches him, and tries to make sense of the seemingly random way Joker orders the creams and bottles and makeup on the sink and shelves. 

It goes on for a bit, with much fuss and rearranging, until there’s only the shampoo and conditioner left, and Joker doesn’t leave those in the shower. Instead, he turns to Bruce and walks up to him, offering both.

“What,” Bruce asks. “You don’t want them?”

“Don’t be obstinate, darling,” Joker says, rolling his eyes as though what Bruce said was particularly silly even by their standards. “I want you to wash my hair, of course.”

Bruce looks at him. 

“You want —”

“Yes, that’s what I said, didn’t I? Come on, baby, do keep up. I know you got places to be. Take those gloves off now, chop-chop, it’s not time for leather play yet.”

Then, before Bruce can protest, Joker starts unbuttoning his own shirt like it’s nothing, like he undresses in front of Bruce every day, and in a way — Bruce glances at the cameras positioned strategically in the bathroom — he does. Bruce has never been there to see it in person, though, and while it doesn’t seem to make a difference to Joker, it does to Bruce. 

_You were going to touch him anyway_ , Bruce reminds himself sternly. That was the plan all along. That’s why he got rid of the guards in the first place. He was going to give Joker the clothes and the cosmetics and the blanket, and then suggest that maybe he could apply the lotion to his hands for him, and ask if it felt good, if he should do that more often. The thing is, that plan didn’t involve nudity, or water, or quite this much — proximity. 

Joker’s shower cabin is _small_.

But the thing is, Bruce hesitates and doesn’t say no right away, which means he’s already lost. Joker doesn’t have a whole lot of clothes to take off and he’s quick and to-the-point. The shirt is gone all too soon, and then he’s unlacing his sweatpants and letting them fall to the floor, and then he’s reaching to the waistband of his boxers and —

“Stop,” Bruce says.

Joker does, but he shoots Bruce a funny look and points at the nearest camera. “You’ve obviously seen my birthday suit.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to see it again,” Bruce counters. “The boxers stay on.”

“But Baaaaaaaats, they’re gonna get all wet and sticky and gross!”

“These stay on or we’re not doing this at all. You’ve got a whole new set of underwear to replace them.”

“You are _such_ a spoilsport sometimes, Batsy dearest, really. So afraid of the dangly bits. You _know_ I’m not hiding a snake in there or anything.”

“Joker.”

“Fine.” Joker affects a deep put-upon sigh like Bruce is the one being unreasonable. He puts two fingers under the waistband of the boxers, pulls, then lets it snap against his bony hips, the skin there pinking instantly. “You’re lucky you’re so charming when you’re being Puritan. Now hurry up. If you’re gonna spoil me you gotta do it right.”

With that, he turns around and skips into the narrow cabin, all long gangly limbs and jutting bone and endless, impossible _white_. It’s even starker against the similarly white tiles on the walls and the floor, and absurdly, Bruce thinks he should have this bathroom repainted. It already bears the battle-scars of Joker’s unrestrained bursts of creativity, just like the rest of his living space, but even with scraps of poems and song lyrics and misshapen doodles adorning the walls Joker looks lost in here, washed out except for the shock of his wild hair and the black cotton of the boxers.

Guilt tries to paw at Bruce again. He shakes his head clean of it and steps forward. 

“How do you imagine we do this?” he asks, resigning himself to what his immediate future is obviously going to be. 

Joker grins. “Easy. I get down on my knees for you.”

And, leaving Bruce’s mind to stutter on the mental images erupting after his words, he does just that, his knees hitting the cabin floor between the back wall and where the spray would be if the shower were turned on. He sits down on his legs and spreads them invitingly, making space. He is just skinny enough that Bruce can squeeze himself in there too, but there’s not nearly as much space as he’d like between the two of them, and besides, Joker’s knees are not going to take that well.

“At least get a towel,” Bruce says, grabbing one from the rack by the cabin. He throws it to Joker, who catches it deftly and quirks an eyebrow at him. “For your knees,” Bruce explains. 

“It’s gonna get sodden.”

“There’s more here. And we can get you more towels if you need them.”

Joker snorts, hand flying to press into the bridge of his nose, and he closes his eyes, laughing softly to himself. He lets the towel drop to the floor. “Incredible,” he mutters, shaking his head. 

Bruce comes even closer. “What is?”

“You. You and Brucie. _We can get you more_. Just like that, snap, magic trick, make a wish, no problemo. Waste the towels, _all_ the towels, waste it all, there’s more where that came from, don’t you worry, don’t you worry, child, this house is a cornucopia and you will never want for anything, ever, ever…”

He is pressing both hands to his face now, laughing. His fingers bend like talons to rake across skin. 

“Stop that,” Bruce says. He reaches out to touch Joker’s shoulder.

The pale body jerks violently before he can, and Joker’s head snaps up, and his eyes burn when he demands, “What the hell, get me another one. No, get me three! I want soft! I want fluffy. Why not? _We can always have more_ , eh, Batsy ol’ pal?”

“Yes,” Bruce says slowly. “Yes, you can.”

Joker giggles again, bends his head and goes back to clawing at his own face, muttering in a strange sing-song cadence, “Save, save, save, reuse and wash and don’t use that, Jackie, hang on, we can both fit, make a game of it, a silly little game, towel snapping, bang-bang-bang, stop that tickles, cornucopia…” 

And that, finally, gives Bruce the push to make up his mind. It helps him remember why he’s here in the first place.

Right. Right.

He grabs another towel from the rack and offers it to Joker, then struggles out of his boots and protective socks, gathers up the cape to keep it as out of the way as possible, takes the shampoo, conditioner and shower gel, and carefully steps into the cabin.

Joker only begins to calm down when Bruce turns the handles to release the water from the affixed shower head, opting for a gentle mist spray first, which is a good choice since Joker’s head is directly in the way of the water. The clown stays on his knees, and slowly begins to snap out of whatever daze he’s worked himself into enough to lift his legs and bunch the two towels under himself. Once settled, his legs spreading again, his laughter softens as the spray gently washes over his head and pearls in his hair.

Bruce listens to his shallow breath as he tugs his gloves off. He hangs them over the towel rack and, schooling his voice into a mild tone, he asks, “Who’s Jackie?”

Joker blinks. For a breath he holds himself very, very still, and his eyes dart around in puzzlement like he’s surprised not only by the question but by the very sound of Bruce’s voice, and by his own position, and why he’s here at all, kneeling and getting wet.

He says, slowly, “What Jackie?”

Bruce sighs. “Nevermind.” Then, he fortifies himself with a deep breath and says, “All right. I’m going to touch your head now.”

He gets a small, breathless giggle in response, and turns to face Joker properly.

Joker, who is kneeling before him with his head bent low, practically naked, open and defenseless and trusting that Bruce will not hurt him, the lipstick-red bat branded on his forearm. 

_Don’t think about it_ , Bruce tells himself firmly even as his breath catches in his throat and his stomach flares up with a surge of heat. _Don’t. Stop. This situation will only mean something if you allow it to._

All the same, his eyes seem to be stuck on the dull gray of the bracelet, and the stain of red above it. Nausea stirs in his stomach again.

 _It’s not like that. It’s_ not.

But he can’t stop himself from seeing the two of them how an outsider might, imagining the picture they make, and Dr. Quinzel’s words shoot through his mind with the ferocity of bullets. It’s probably that which makes him ask, quietly, “Are you sure this is what you want?”

Joker looks up at him through increasingly wet curls. “As sure as I am of anything, baby,” he says, smiling, looking entirely lucid again, then turns to the cameras. “Hear that, guardian angels? I asked! No need to pat our gallant hero on the wrist, here! Though of course,” he adds, turning thoughtful now, “I’m not entirely sure what I had for breakfast this morning, so that may not be saying much.”

Bruce sighs. “Get ready.”

“I’m always ready for _you_ , sugar.”

Bruce decides it’s in their both best interests if he doesn’t comment on that.

And then he wishes he had, wishes he had kept the banter going, even if it meant descending into meaningless babble, because now he is out of excuses to stall. Because now he has to get on with it and actually touch Joker’s hair. And in the silence, the moment when he does, when his bare fingers reach out to carefully part the thick green curls to reach the skin of Joker’s scalp, suddenly feels altogether too… 

Big.

But maybe Joker thinks so too. The full-body shudder that wrecks him the moment Bruce’s hands rest on his head nearly vibrates through the walls of the cabin, and he sucks in a breath, and Bruce can see his muscles locking tight.

“Joker?” he asks.

Joker says nothing for a long moment. 

Then he breathes out and asks, “Hey Bats, you ever plucked a goose?”

Bruce lets some of the tension out through his nose. His hands press deeper, start moving, slow and careful, massaging water into hair, and Joker lets out a small moan but keeps himself very still, and Bruce recognizes what it is. What the question was supposed to achieve. 

He’s almost grateful for it, in his heart. They could both use the distraction.

So he picks up the offered ball and turns it back around. “Have _you_?”

“Nah, but now I want to. I’m pretty sure one of them bastards chased me down a sidewalk once in my careless youth. Ooooh, hey, stop me if you heard this one, but a goose walks into a bar, right, and the barkeep, he says, Hey, it’s a goose. And the goose looks at him. And she says, Yeah, and? And the bozo says, No shirt, no service. So the goose jumps him and bites him on the nose until it falls off and the bozo falls to the ground and the goose rips his shirt to shreds and puts a scrap of it on, and goes, Joke’s on you, sucker!”

Bruce lets him laugh, steadying his head in place with one hand as the rest of the clown’s body shakes, and turns the spray into regular, the water running nice and hot now and leaving flowers of steam on the tiles. It gets on his face and drips down his suit in rivulets, but he ignores it — the suit’s waterproof anyway — and positions himself closer, leaning down slightly to get more comfortable as he starts to massage Joker’s scalp in earnest, long, measured strokes, pressing deep. 

“That reminds me of a dream I had,” Joker babbles, his voice slightly unsteady and wavering into higher pitches like a chaotic improvised melody. “There was a bar. I was mixing drinks. Eddie wanted a tequilla sunrise so I go and reach for the grenadine but instead I’m holding a gren-a-de, ha, geddit, and I pass it to him, and he tries to drink it and then it explodes in his face and he looks at me and tells me, Joker, I’m not angry, I’m _disappointed_.”

Bruce reaches for the shampoo and squeezes some onto his hand. Instantly the cabin smells of citrus, fresh and sharp, and the gel is lukewarm on his fingers, and diamond particles twinkle in it like glitter as he rubs it thoroughly into Joker’s hair. 

It foams up in his hands almost immediately, suds of soap dropping down onto the cabin floor and swirling there until they disappear down the drain. Joker begins to catch them, giggling, and rubs them into his body, temporarily distracted from his tirade, and Bruce takes the opportunity to keep massaging his head to the rhythm they both know very well by now, one, two, three, one, two, three. 

He doesn’t realize that his heart has slowed down to match it until Joker starts humming it out, turning his head in Bruce’s hands to guide them where he wants them, almost nuzzling, his voice low and hoarse, soap sluicing down his body. 

The humming accompanies Bruce when he gently rinses the shampoo out and then applies it again. Then it dies down, only to start up again as a melody, or several melodies bleeding one into the other with no rhyme or reason, the lyrics a disjointed mess, like Joker can’t quite decide which song he wants to be singing and only knows that he wants to be singing _something_. 

Bruce only recognizes a few of them. He suspects Joker is making half of them up on the go. He keeps pressing, slow and steady, and tries not to lose himself in the rhythm and the lulling cadence of Joker’s voice and the steady hum of the shower, and the heat, and the steam, and the smell of citrus. 

Then, Joker stops singing. 

He whispers, “Harder.”

And Bruce presses harder. “Like this?” he asks quietly. 

“Harder,” Joker insists. “Please.”

Bruce swallows. It’s getting really hot in the cabin, the steam now almost oppressive as it tries to swirl its way into his suit. And there really isn’t a whole lot of space.

Which means that getting on his knees in front of Joker really doesn’t make a whole lot of strategic sense, but after a breath that is exactly what Bruce ends up doing.

It’s not an ideal position. The cabin is hardly big enough and Joker has to nudge his legs further apart to make space for Bruce between them until his knees are pressed up against both walls. Bruce’s feet are smashed uncomfortably against the glass doors of the cabin. They are close enough now that Bruce can count water droplets collecting in the hollow of Joker’s collarbone.

He still can’t see Joker’s face though — it’s hiding behind a wall of wet hair — and that is probably for the best. Not to mention fair, since Bruce is hiding his face too, and _he_ has the privilege of a mask. 

The thought makes him want to reach out and part the green curls to see what it is Joker is trying to hide from him. He resists the urge, feels a little sick at having it in the first place, and instead, he silently reaches for the conditioner.

This time, when he starts to massage it into Joker’s head, he does go harder, the new position making it more comfortable and the angle better, and Joker lets slip a sigh that’s caught halfway between distressed and blissful. The sound teases at parts Bruce he is not prepared to acknowledge, so he sets his jaw against it and chooses to just keeps going. 

It’s the steam. The steam, misting on his face and suit and clinging and cloying and making it hard to breathe.

His fingers trace the curve of Joker’s scalp. His right hand lingers there, and then inches down to the back of Joker’s neck, scratching gently at the base of Joker’s scalp.

“ _More_ ,” Joker pleads, breathless, “harder, Bats, do that again but harder.”

Bruce does, dragging his nails over sensitive shower-pinked skin, and his breath would have stuttered if he hadn’t fought so hard to keep the rhythm of it steady, because the words, and the tone of Joker’s voice, it sounds so much like —

He’s not going to think about the tape. Or Joker’s nudity. Or — or anything else even remotely connected to that. He’s here to help, and that —

Now both his hands scratch over Joker’s head, and this time it’s not a sigh that he gets in response, it’s a moan. 

Bruce’s eyes want to slip down, to where the sodden black boxers hug Joker’s taut skin. Resolutely, he keeps them on the top of Joker’s head, on his own hands, going down to the nape of the clown’s neck and then back again, and up, and down, drawing circular patterns, massaging, pressing, scratching…

Joker’s head turns. He is nudging at Bruce’s right hand. 

Bruce lets it slip down over his ear, and slowly touches there, drawing a circle over the lobe. It’s warm, hot from the shower. The skin behind it feels soft and tender.

“Itches,” Joker tells him, his giggle small, taut as a bowstring. 

Bruce scratches there, gently, and smoothes his fingers over the reddened skin. “Is that better?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Do it again.”

Bruce does, and then repeats the movement with Joker’s other ear. Slowly, he lets his thumbs caress Joker’s temples, pressing in tight. 

Then, he catches sight of Joker’s arm, the red bat partially washed away but still lingering. His mind sets.

“Here,” he says, one hand falling away from Joker’s head to take the marked arm and bring it up under the water. “Let’s get that off.”

Joker makes a distressed sound when both of Bruce’s hands leave his face, but then he sits quiet and compliant when Bruce’s fingers begin to scrub at the remnants of the lipstick. It comes off easily enough, in faint reddish smudges which mix with the soap suds, and Bruce makes sure to press at the skin there with the same regular pace as he did before.

He can feel the hardness of bone underneath, easy, too easy, and worries. _So skinny._

Then, he moves back up, urging Joker’s bent head under the shower spray once more to rinse for the final time. 

“There,” he says quietly, his hand stroking over wet hair. “We’re done.”

Joker sits there without a word. He still isn’t looking at Bruce.

And then both his hands come up around his skinny torso, and he is hugging himself, hands tucked into his armpits, and he’s leaning back as if he wants to bleed into the wall behind him. His breath is shallow. His body tense. 

He says, “I’m going to need to touch myself now.”

It takes a moment for Bruce to catch the meaning behind the tight, clipped words. He sits back, feeling hot, his throat much too dry.

“Oh.”

“Naturally you’re welcome to stay and watch, but —”

“No.” Bruce pulls himself up, banging awkwardly against the cabin with his knees and elbows as he goes, and steps out. “I’m — I have to go anyway.”

Joker giggles all through the frantic process of Bruce pulling on his gloves and boots, and keeps giggling when Bruce all but bolts from the bathroom, grabbing the empty duffel bag on his way out. Once the door shuts, though, the giggle almost instantly bleeds into a moan, and Bruce stands there in the middle of Joker’s bedroom for a heartbeat or two, breathing in air which smells wonderfully stark and fresh after the cloying swirls of steam and citrus. 

God, he needs air. He can’t seem to be able to catch his breath properly. His mind is a racing blur, and he doesn’t _want_ to picture Joker there in the cabin, but — 

Alfred’s voice comes to his rescue just as Bruce starts to wonder if he isn’t losing his mind. 

“Sir,” he says through the speakers, “I hasten to inform you that your time is nearly up.”

Bruce blinks, then keeps his eyes closed. His suit is dripping all over the carpet, but that doesn’t matter, not when blood is rushing to his cock so fast Bruce is nearly dizzy with it, not when he still feels like he’s suffocating. 

“Sir,” Alfred repeats, urgently.

In the bathroom, there is another moan, loud enough to struggle past the rush of the shower and the closed door. 

Bruce’s hands curl. The gloves, all of a sudden, feel a size too small. The heat of Joker’s skin still itches on his fingers. 

He swallows, once, heavily, and looks up into the cameras.

“I’m going.”

Silence follows him out. There are no more moans that he can hear. He tries very hard not to imagine what that means. 

 

***

 

He almost trips over himself in his hurry to get out of the suit once he stumbles into the cave. Once free, he ignores his near-painful erection, changes into sweatpants and a tank top, and rushes back up, then out, to run laps around the Manor gardens in the chilly air. 

He knows Alfred is watching from the windows. He catches sight of Jason too, before the boy disappears back into the house. He ignores them and runs, and runs, and runs, until the chill finally bites into him hard enough to chase the smell of citrus from his mind.

By the time he makes it back to the house, he’s almost ready to rationalize away the whole thing, including his own arousal. It’s only natural Joker would react this way. He’d been starved for physical touch for months, and Bruce knows by now what a sensual creature the clown is. He’d been a fool for not expecting that. Won’t make the same mistake again. 

As for his own reaction…

He’s just going to need to work harder on self-discipline. It’s clear his body isn’t completely obedient yet. Bruce has had a dry spell for a long time now, neglecting his socialite persona, and he’d worked himself up. Nothing more to it.

He almost manages to convince himself of that and not feel sick and self-hating by the time he cloaks himself in the night again — choosing the spare suit this time — and heads out with Jason at his side.

They bring in Sionis and his gang that night. That helps.

And if Jason takes notice that Bruce seems to be extra brutal taking down the gang, he keeps his comments to himself.

 

***

 

Next time he visits Joker, he is ready to face him again without his thoughts tripping over memories of the shower. 

Or so he expects.

Still, he lingers in the doorway, caught off-guard by what he sees, and stands there watching for a while before he asks,

“What are you doing?”

Joker barely spares him a glance. He’s too busy pushing his desk across the floor to the other end of the parlor. He’s wearing his new makeup though, his eyes rimmed in black and a touch of rouge on his cheeks, and his lips gleam a deep red, and the tube of hand cream peeks out from the pocket of his new purple sweatpants. He isn’t wearing a shirt. Behind him, the double doors to the balcony are thrust wide open, wind tumbling in, ushering in the smell of cut grass and wet leaves and Spring. 

“Redecorating,” Joker informs Bruce, and grunts with the effort, sweat glistening on his forehead.

Bruce can feel the muscles in his face tighten. “Redecorating?”

“Obviously.”

“But,” Bruce starts, and then shuts his mouth because while a storm of furious objections instantly erupts in his head, he can’t seem to find one he can dress in proper words.

 _But it’s my home. But it’s been the way it is for centuries. You can’t just go around and change things in my_ home.

He knows it’s stupid. He’s been changing things himself, and much more drastically. But that’s the thing — the cave is an addition. Just another element of the house, which had had new elements added to it by each new generation of Waynes to make it even grander, bigger, better. He’s just… added his own stamp on the place, like his parents had done before him, and his grandparents, and grand-grandparents. 

Joker is not a Wayne. Joker is a sick criminal who just happens to be occupying this particular part of the house, one which Bruce never felt any particular attachment to in the first place. And maybe that’s the problem.

But also, Bruce may have changed things, even in these particular rooms to turn them into the fortress they are now, but just — moving furniture around? For the sake of it? To make it look different? Alfred has never done it, in all the years he’s worked here, and Bruce never once thought that was even an option. The rooms are furnished the way they have been furnished since Bruce can remember, with only minor and necessary variations, and he _likes_ it that way. There is no need to change anything. No need to — meddle.

To disrupt. To interfere. 

But he can’t say any of that out loud. He settles for, “Don’t you like the way things are?”

“It’s boring,” Joker whines, panting. “I’m bored. Doc Mulligan says it’s good to refresh your living space every once in a while. And this place is like a museum, Batsy, so… stale.”

“Stale,” Bruce echoes, and can almost imagine the house grumbling in the same offended disapproval that swirls in his gut. 

“Yeah. Be a dear and give a clown a hand, will ya? Put them hero muscles to good use for a change.”

Words crowd against the back of Bruce’s teeth. Harsh, unkind, ugly words. He tries to swallow them down, and succeeds after the second try.

It’s Joker’s space now, he reminds himself. No longer a proper part of the Manor. In a way, it’s like his cave. No one else has been using these rooms anyway, and, likely, no one will again. Whatever Joker does in here, it’s his right, and it doesn’t matter. 

He keeps that on the forefront of his mind when he finally makes himself move and stand beside Joker. 

Instantly he catches a whiff of citrus and has to fight the hot flush away from his face, and wonders if Joker is feeling any similar discomfort. If so, he is not showing it one bit, and instead he spits into his hands to rub them against one another and grins, and says, “All righty then, heave ho!”

Together they push the desk into the corner across from where it stood before, and Bruce focuses on the physical strain of it to hush the objections which continue to rattle around in his head. Joker insists that they move the desk this way and that until he is satisfied with how the light from the windows falls on it.

“Okay,” he pants, pushing his hair away from his forehead, “now the sofa.”

“What’s wrong with the sofa?” Bruce snaps, irritable, but Joker shushes him with a wave of his hand and skips over to the offending piece of furniture to regard it with exaggerated thoughtfulness. 

“Hmmmmm. Hmmmmm. Hmmmmm. No, no, no, this won’t do, this won’t do at all. Can’t be having with it. Too predictable. Needs surprise. Needs panache. Needs that ooooooh factor!” he mumbles, walking around, the sun catching in his glossy, noticeably softer hair, which bounces around Joker’s head in curls that look almost perky. 

“It’s a _sofa_ ,” Bruce points out, frustrated, because that’s better than looking at that hair and remembering how it felt wet in his hands.

Joker ignores him. Instead, he jumps in front of the sofa, then pushes it back a few inches with noticeable effort, maneuvers it into a position sideways to the screen in the wall, and happily upends the entire thing onto the floor.

“There!” he claps, breath heaving. “That’s what daddy’s talking about!”

Bruce abandons all attempts to make sense of the situation. Instead he asks, “Happy now?”

“Don’t be silly, my dulcet Dark Knight!” Joker turns to him with a blinding grin. “We’re only just beginning!”

Turns out Joker wants to attack the bookshelves next, and when he discovers that it’s impossible to get them to move, he consoles himself with grabbing armfuls of books and moving them from one shelf to the one across and arranging them into patterns that make sense only to him. This takes some time, and Bruce is roped into helping, and he gets so exasperated with Joker’s bossy attitude that he forgets to be angry about the redecorating itself. Next Joker recruits Bruce to rearrange the gym, directing in an overly cinematic, lordly manner where to move this and that, and he seems to be having the time of his life ordering around Batman like he would one of his goons.

In the end, Bruce bites down on his bottom lip and doesn’t protest too much. It keeps them both occupied, and the grunt work distracts him from their previous meeting, which can only be a good thing.

Besides, when he stops overthinking he rather enjoys the exercise, even if Joker’s pedantry is enough to make the most patient man on Earth contemplate increasingly violent ways to shut him up.

The bedroom is last. It takes both of them to move the ancient mahogany wardrobe, then the massive bed, but eventually they manage to invert the entire room into a mirror image of where things stood previously, and a part of Bruce has to admit that it does look somewhat… better. Fresher. New. 

Joker seems happy enough with this arrangement, anyhow; he collapses onto the bed with a bounce, some of the lipstick smeared, his body gleaming with sweat in the grated pool of sunlight struggling in through the windows. 

“Nothing like a bit of Spring cleaning, eh, Bats?” he chirps. “I’m gonna need to change these sheets next. Get someone to send up new ones, would ya?”

“You changed your sheets not a week ago.”

“And now I want to change them again. Feel fresh. It’s important to feel fresh when there’s a new beginning afoot, don’cha know?”

“A new beginning?” Bruce asks, but Joker only starts to sing and kick his legs to the rhythm, and Bruce decides not to press it. 

He leaves after that, because his hour is nearly up and Joker doesn’t seem to be in the mood for anything calmer anyway, and he is surprised that even though his back and arms are on fire his step feels just a bit lighter than when he’d come in.

He looks around at the halls he’s spent his whole life in, noting each portrait, each curtain, each carpet and shelf and lamp and cabinet. He knows them all so well he could easily navigate his way with his eyes closed, and yet, it somehow feels like he’s noticing them properly for the first time. He wonders why each piece stands where it does. He tries to imagine what it would look like if he moved this armchair, this suit of armor, this mirror.

Maybe there’s something to it. Maybe he could think about moving things around in his own bedroom. See if it would help him sleep better. 

Just because something’s been a certain way for a long time doesn’t mean it has to stay like that.

 

***

 

Some of that lightness stays with him when he makes his way to another private hour with Joker the following week. He doesn’t want to call it hope, but there is definitely some… anticipation, and not of the kind which sits tight and heavy in his chest, but rather of the kind that _flutters_ , regardless of his best efforts to keep it in check. He doesn’t know what he’ll find behind the metal wall this time. And today, the prospect doesn’t seem as bleak as it did before.

But then he spots the frail, unassuming figure of Dr. Mulligan waiting for him by the doors to Joker’s rooms, and whatever lightness may have sat in him is snuffed out like a candle flame.

She is looking at him warily from behind her glasses as he approaches, looking smaller in simple red sweater and jeans and jacket without her white coat, hair tied into a practical ponytail. She is clutching a handbag close to her chest, waiting, and Bruce slowly makes his way toward her, wondering why on Earth Alfred decided not to warn him about this.

“Doctor,” he says levelly, coming to a stop a little distance from her.

“You never answered any of my letters,” she says curtly, “so I decided a more direct approach was in order.”

Bruce says nothing, and waits.

“What you’re doing is outrageous,” she says. “It violates every rule of ethics and plain common sense. Don’t you realize how dangerous your idea is, to both of you?”

“I’m not hurting him,” Bruce says coldly. “I’m doing my best to help.”

“And how do I know that if you’re not letting anyone see?”

“Because I give you my word.”

“That may be enough for Commissioner Gordon, but _he_ certainly doesn’t have the patient’s best interest at heart.”

“You have your ways, Doctor, and I have mine. You said yourself that I can influence him in ways other people can’t. I’m using that for good.”

“And who’s to be the judge of that, hm? That’s what _I_ ’d like to know.”

“It’s done, Doctor.”

She breathes out, pushing the glasses up her nose, and murmurs, “Yes, I know. Yelling at you won’t do any good. I’ve… made my peace with it, for now.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To give you this.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a midnight blue folder packed with documents, and hands it to him. “I promised I’d compile a list of methods to cope with anxiety and panic attacks and to relieve less extreme symptoms, so here it is. If you’re bent on going through with this insanity, you’re going to need it. I left one for the guards, too. Incidentally, they don’t seem too happy with this new arrangement either.”

Bruce accepts the folder silently and leafs through it. “Thank you,” he says.

She sighs. “Don’t. Just because I’m not going to keep protesting doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you. You’re making my job even more complicated, and that job is _treating the Joker_. I hope you appreciate what that puts me through.”

“I’m not going to willfully counteract your therapy, Doctor.”

She glares at him, hard and unforgiving. “You have no way of knowing that if you keep your word and refrain from watching our sessions. And from what my patient tells me, you’re already messing things up.”

Bruce sets his jaw. “Meaning?”

She shakes her head, gazing down at the carpet. She sighs. “Just — be responsible,” she says quietly. “Observe and keep an open mind and don’t antagonize him or lead him astray. Or on. We must be very clear on that. Whatever you let him believe must be genuine, founded in reality, or this will all backfire spectacularly and there may be no one to pick up the pieces.”

Bruce thinks the words over, and stores them for further examination even though they don’t sit well with him at all.

Then, because she has shown herself to be more patient and understanding than he had any right to expect, he asks, “Would you like to go in with me now and see him?”

She doesn’t look surprised by the offer, and chews on her bottom lip as though it’s something she was asking herself not too long ago.

“No,” she says at length. “But I would appreciate it if you let me watch from the guard room. Just this once. I want to see how you two interact when you’re not fighting.”

And Bruce doesn’t like this suggestion, but he owes her, so he makes himself say, “All right.”

She steps aside, then, to let him through. Before he can punch the code in, she says, “Harleen told me you accosted her in the parking lot.”

Bruce pauses with his hand over the keyboard.

“Accost is a strong word,” he says.

“Well, it’s the one she used. Leave her alone, Batman. She’s still young and she’s learning and I’m keeping an eye on her. I agree that letting her stay on as Joker’s doctor might have been catastrophic, but let her move on and learn from her own mistakes.”

Bruce hesitates. “Do you think she is a good doctor?” he asks.

“I think she has the makings of a great one, under the right guidance. Which I’m willing to provide.”

“And what about Dr. Lancer?”

Dr. Mulligan’s face darkens. There is a hard gleam in her eyes. “The sooner they fire that bastard the better.”

Bruce nods. “I’m investigating him.”

“ _Good_. That, I will gladly help you with.”

Bruce turns from her to enter the security code, and this time she doesn’t stop him.

 

***

 

It’s a quiet meeting for them, with Joker the one to suggest a game of cards which lulls them into a quiet rhythm of familiarity. He’s wearing makeup again and this time it’s stronger, his eyes shaded so that their toxic green seems to gleam all the brighter. He’s tried to style his hair, too, combing them more to one side, and he’s wearing one of the purple suits, topped with an elegant green bowtie. He tries to make small talk, babbling about some of his favorite ex-neighbors from Arkham. 

Bruce lets him talk and laugh and squirm as much as he needs to, and watches him, and listens. Maybe it’s his wishful thinking, but Joker looks _better_. Calmer. Happier. 

He hopes Dr. Mulligan can see it, too.

She’s gone from the guard room when Bruce makes his way over there after their game is over, and there’s no message for Bruce anywhere in evidence. So Bruce stays there watching Joker until he hears the guards climbing the stairs, and then he leaves by the secret back door he’d had installed there.

“Done spoiling your pet for the day?” Jason asks him when he makes his way to the cave; the boy is covered in oil stains, a rag in his hand, scrubbing at his motorcycle.

Bruce opens his mouth to protest, and then thinks better of it. “Yes,” he mutters, reaching to take the cowl off. “Now I’m going to sleep.”

Jason shrugs. “Whatever, old man. By the way, Grayson called. Wants to know if the clown’s gutted you yet so he can inherit everything and move in.”

“Hilarious. You should get some sleep, too, we have a long night ahead.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m going out later.”

Bruce stops halfway to the showers. “Where are you going?”

“Just out, okay?”

Bruce gives him a long look. “You’re not getting into trouble, are you?”

Jason rolls his eyes at him. “Don’t sweat it, Bruce, Jesus. Believe it or not, I have a life outside of this place.”

That does very little to alleviate Bruce’s suspicions. He says, “You know you can tell me if you need anything.”

“Sure, _dad_. Now go wash off those clown cooties before they catch.”

Bruce watches him for a minute longer, then turns away. He thinks maybe it’s a good time to activate the tracking bug he put on Jason’s motorcycle. 

 

***

 

He follows Falcone’s grunts to a gun drop-off that night. The Italians seem to be cooking something big again with the amount of unregistered arms they’re bringing in, and now that Black Mask is out of the picture, Bruce can give them his proper attention. He skulks through the shadows after the unremarkable delivery van, Jason cornering another one coming in from the other side, and it’s looking to be a clean, swift takedown once they get to the rendezvous point. 

And then there’s static in his earpiece, and a mechanically altered, level male voice says, “Batman.”

Bruce stops dead in his tracks. He touches the comm in his ear. “Who’s there?”

“The weapons are not in the van. It’s a diversion. They’re leading you into a trap.”

Bruce clings to the shadows of the rooftop, tracking the slow-moving van as it inches along in the traffic below. “Who _are_ you?” he demands. “How did you manage to hack into this channel?”

“I’m a person with the means and the willingness to help,” the voice says, curt and to the point. “Now, you’re wasting time. The real delivery will happen by the D’Angelo Sewage Treatment Plant and it’s scheduled for 1:30. If you hurry up you can still make it.”

“How do I know _you’re_ not leading me into a trap?”

“You don’t. You’re just going to have to trust your gut.”

There’s a click, signaling the end of the connection. Bruce swears under his breath. “Robin. Come in.”

“Yeah?”

“Did you hear that?”

“Yeah, they used the open channel. So, do we split? You go to the Plant and I follow the vans?”

Bruce grits his teeth. “There’s no reason why we should listen to this tip.”

“But you’re going to anyway.”

Dammit. Bruce presses his eyes closed as the wind beats against him.

“Just go,” Jason urges. “I’ll deal with these guys and call you in if it gets ugly.”

“Keep in touch.”

“Yeah, yeah, you too. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Bruce watches the van for a moment longer, then grits his teeth and turns away.

An hour later, they have the Italian mobsters tied up and waiting for the police, and a truckload full of illegal firearms immobilized as evidence, and as Bruce and Jason watch the arrests from the rafters, the voice cracks in their comms once again.

“Looks like your gut worked this time,” it says.

Bruce isn’t amused. He demands, “Who are you?”

There’s a moment of silence. Then the voice says, “You can call me Oracle.”

The link dies. Bruce looks at Jason, who shrugs. 

“Don’t ask me. The tip was good. Maybe they really do want to help.”

He isn’t looking at Bruce, his eyes locked on the proceedings below. Bruce studies his face carefully. 

“I’m going to track down the transmission,” he says.

“Sure, you’re going to try. Might be hard though. I mean, they did hack into our system. They probably know how to cover their tracks.”

“And yet they expect us to trust them.”

“You did, though, didn’t you?”

Bruce looks away, down at the mobsters being loaded into the police van. “No,” he mutters. “I simply had no other choice.”

Jason shrugs again, and that seems to be it.

Back in the cave, Bruce examines both their communicators, and runs decryption and voice recognition on the recordings from this Oracle person, only to come up empty-handed. Jason was right — whoever it is, they do know how to cover their tracks. That doesn’t make Bruce any more inclined to trust them, but maybe it’s a one-off thing. Maybe they won’t reappear.

The question of security remains, and Bruce spends the rest of the evening carefully going through his entire system to detect any possible breaches. The fact that there don’t seem to be any only spikes his suspicions, and he resets all his passwords and encryptions and other security measures to make their communication lines and servers secure. What happened tonight is unacceptable. Even if the tip was solid, Bruce has to make sure it won’t happen again.

After all, he has more than his own secrets to protect now. 

 

***

 

His mind still buzzes with thoughts of Oracle days later when he makes his way to Joker’s rooms, and he can’t help but be distracted. Joker, of course, notices.

“You’re not listening to me,” he complains, pouting, putting his cards down on the table without bothering to hide them. “And here I’ve been telling you such an interesting story, too. For shame.”

Bruce doesn’t have it in him to protest. He surrenders his own cards too and sits back heavily, allowing his shoulders to slump, just a little.

“Trouble at work, honey?” Joker asks, affecting concern.

Bruce sighs. “There’s always trouble.”

“One of my lovely associates discover the gifts I left for them, is that it?”

Suddenly, all thoughts of Oracle fly out the window. Bruce sits up straight and spares Joker with a glare.

“Ha!” Joker leans forward, resting his chin in his hands. “It’s about time. I did wonder.”

“How many bombs are there, Joker?” Bruce asks, abandoning all pretense. Now that Joker brought it up himself, there’s no use beating around the bush.

Joker takes a moment to think about it. He knocks at his own head, squinting, tongue sticking out. “Four?” he guesses. “No, five! No, wait, six. Yeah, six. I’m pretty sure it’s six.”

“How?”

“A magician never reveals his tricks, silly.”

“ _Joker_.” 

Joker makes a zipping motion over his lips, then blows Bruce a kiss. “How many have you found yet?” he asks eagerly, curling his legs under himself on the chair. 

“Tell me where they are. All of them.”

“But it’s fun though, isn’t it? Like an Easter egg hunt!”

“The bombs,” Bruce growls. “Where. Are. They?”

“Sheesh.” Joker blinks, then pulls a face at him. “Keep yer hotpants on, Buster, I’ll sing. But only because you’ve been so nice to me.”

“I’m not in the mood for this today, Joker. No games. Just tell me.”

Joker watches him for a heartbeat, two heartbeats, three. Then, he shoves his chair back abruptly and stands up, and strides over to the desk.

He goes for marker and paper and scribbles something furiously, then comes over and drops the piece of paper on Bruce’s head.

“There,” he says, his eyes cold, his mouth pinched thin. “Knock yourself out.”

Bruce grabs the paper and studies it. It’s a list of addresses, barely legible but there, and four of them are of bombs that have already been neutralized, including the one which went off in Tricorner Yards. 

Joker stands over him with his arms crossed over his chest, expectant. Bruce looks up at him.

“I still want you to tell me how you set this up,” he says.

Something gleams in Joker’s eyes, something hard, something cold. He turns away from Bruce and disappears into the bedroom, and shuts the door behind him.

Bruce groans, pressing his hands to his face. He waits a beat and calls out.

“Joker.”

Nothing.

“Joker!”

Still nothing. 

Bruce stands up and contemplates just leaving, just getting the hell out of here, because it’s clear he’s no use to anybody in his current state and is in fact only making things worse. The door looks inviting as hell right now, and it’s probably the more sensible thing to do. He could just come back as Wayne next time, and bring popcorn and a movie, and try to placate Joker again until —

He sighs, hands balling into fists. No. That won’t work. Joker won’t let himself be appeased this easily again.

And he seemed really angry.

 _So what_ , a part of Bruce insists, _he’s a murderer, his bombs killed people. You had a right to interrogate him and he knows it. He’s just being difficult_.

Another part remembers that Joker is a mental patient, and, eventually, directs Bruce’s steps toward the bedroom door.

He raps against it, three times, and waits a few seconds for an answer that never comes. 

So he says, “I’m going in,” and pushes the door open.

“Go away,” Joker says, and Bruce sees him standing with his back to the door, tucked into a corner by the far wall, shoulders hunched, hands pressed into the wall. 

Bruce steps into the room. 

“Joker.”

“I said go away.”

“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“Gong, thong, dong.”

Bruce takes a deep breath and starts walking toward him.

When he gets close enough, he notices the trembling, and the frantic way Joker’s fingers scratch at the wallpaper. The tense set of his shoulders. The hair at the nape of Joker’s neck standing on end.

He hesitates, but only for a moment. Then he keeps walking.

“If you don’t go away now, Batsy boy,” Joker whispers, wound tight as a spring inside a jack-in-the-box, “I _will_ claw your pretty face open.”

“Why?” Bruce asks quietly.

“Because I want to. Because you’d look pretty. Because I haven’t seen someone else’s blood in ages. Because it’d be _fun_.”

“I don’t think you mean that,” Bruce whispers, though in his heart, he does.

Joker turns. His hand flies at Bruce, fingers primed to hook into his mouth, and he’s fast, but Bruce is faster, and catches the blow before it can land.

“Don’t,” he urges. “Don’t.”

Joker struggles, but he’s clearly not giving it his all, and he doesn’t try to strike Bruce with his other hand. Instead he keeps himself still, his eyes closed, his breath heavy, like he’s fighting something monstrous inside himself that refuses to back down. 

Seconds pass. Turn into minutes. Neither of them moves.

Until Joker slumps, and his knees buckle, and he’s about to fall forward but Bruce catches him and guides him gently to the bed.

He sits them both down, then, and lets Joker lean into him, and takes both trembling pale hands in his. 

He massages them in silence, hard, stubborn. He waits. 

It takes a while, but eventually Joker’s breath syncs with his again. They sit there in silence, breathing, leaning on one another.

Touching.

And for once, Bruce allows himself not to think.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, it's been a while! I've been quite busy but I hope you enjoy this one anyway.
> 
> A lot of folks seemed to love chapter 5, which I'm thrilled to see, and it even inspired some fanart! Here's one by the lovely [joons](http://joons.tumblr.com/post/142336560635/that-one-scene-from-half-way-across-by-dracze) and another by [batty-clowns](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/142504223908/batty-clowns-been-reading-draczes-fanfiction#notes) \- check them out, they're gorgeous!
> 
> Joons was also kind enough to make this [stunning aesthetics post for HWA](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/143700383858/joons-the-thought-bright-and-hot-falls-like-a) which actually made me cry. Thank you!!
> 
> There's [some talk through asks about HWA](http://dracze.tumblr.com/tagged/half-way-across) on my tumblr if you're interested, and [a couple of new batjokes drabbles.](http://dracze.tumblr.com/tagged/drabble-meme)
> 
> As always, a GREAT many thanks to Mitzvah whose wonderful ideas keep making this story so much richer than it would have been otherwise. 
> 
> Enjoy!

A few nights later Bruce steps out of the shadow in Jim’s office and hands him the list of bombs.

“They’ve all been neutralized,” he says curtly as Jim goes through the usual motions of gasping, catching his breath, glaring at him and mumbling something about being too old for this. He waits silently for Jim to take a good look at the list and process it at his own pace.

Finally Jim looks up at him. “Are these —?”

“Yes.”

“How the hell —”

“He gave me the addresses.”

“What.” Jim pushes his chair back as if to stand up. “You mean — you mean he —”

“Yes.”

“Jesus Christ, what have you done to him?”

Bruce tries not to bristle. “Nothing,” he says. “He volunteered the information on his own.” And then, after a moment’s pause, he adds, “I only had to needle him a little.”

Jim looks back at the list. His face is pale, and when he combs his hair back there’s a tremor in his hand Bruce pretends he doesn’t see.

“Well fuck me,” he whispers. He looks up at Bruce again. “I don’t suppose he told you how he did it?”

“No. But I will get it out of him eventually.”

“Looks like your vigilante therapy thing is working.” Jim takes a deep breath, slumping in the chair. “I’ll be damned.”

“You can send the cleanup crews to the sites. The bombs have been disarmed but I didn’t remove them. You might need them for evidence.”

“Sure, sure. Hey, if you get any more tips from the pasty bastard feel free to —”

Bruce is already jumping out the window.

 

***

 

“I took care of the bombs,” Bruce tells Joker the next day. He stays by the door this time, only taking two steps into the room. 

Joker watches him from his desk. He’d been furiously scribbling something in red marker before Bruce interrupted; sheets of paper litter the floor around his chair, some of them crumpled or torn into scraps, all of them scrawled over in bright red letters which look sharp and jagged even from Bruce’s limited vantage point.

Their eyes catch and hold. Then, Joker shrugs and goes back to his writing.

Bruce watches him, throat working, and says, “Commissioner Gordon appreciated your list.”

Another shrug.

Bruce waits a beat. He opens his mouth, closes it again. He says, “So did I.”

The scribbling stops, but Joker doesn’t look up.

“No you didn’t,” he decides eventually. “If you did you’d say thank you.”

Indignation climbs up Bruce’s throat, but he catches and holds it in before it can spill. He’s bigger than this… pettiness. 

But no way is he thanking Joker for _graciously_ fixing something which had put people in danger in the first place. Instead he takes a moment to regroup and asks, “Would you like to go outside?”

“What,” Joker’s hand hovers suspended over paper, “now?”

“No, not now. But soon. I did promise that we’d find a way to do that if you behave.”

“Oh, so I’ve been a good lap dog, have I?” Joker giggles, but even with the distance between them Bruce notices that the hand which isn’t currently clutching the marker digs painfully into the edge of the desk. “A good lil Jokey? Here boy, fetch the bombs, there’s a good clown, here’s a Joker Snack?”

There’s that hot surge of indignation again, and this time it locks into place. Two can play at this game and if Joker insists on putting himself in this demeaning position, well then. Bruce can certainly oblige.

“Yes,” he says. 

A shiver races up Joker’s spine. He closes his eyes, a small, secretive smile lingering on his painted lips. “Well, at least you’re being honest,” he giggles. “And I suppose there’s a thank you in there _somewhere_ , eh?”

“Do you want to go outside or not?”

“Do you even care about what I want?”

The question catches Bruce unawares. He gives himself a moment to consider the phrasing, then chooses his answer with care. 

“If you don’t want to go we won’t force you,” he says. “It’s your right, not an obligation.”

“Really? Even if Doc Mullie-Wullie says I should get some fresh air?”

There’s a sinking sort of feeling in Bruce’s stomach as he makes himself ask, “Why do you assume I’d force you?”

This earns him peals of shaky, nervous laughter, Joker bending so far over his chair that for a moment it looks like his spine might snap in half. He wipes tears from his eyes and looks at Bruce, and manages, “Oh sweetie, do you really not understand how this incarceration thing works? Or are you just _playing_ dumb? Because I seem to recall a certain incident with the pills…”

Bruce swallows. “That was — poorly handled,” he allows, the words tasting sour. “I’ll admit that. But you’re a mental patient and your ability to make informed decisions is legally limited, and —”

“Ah yes, they really loved spouting that particular load of horseshit at dear old Arkham,” Joker interrupts. “Worked like a magic trick on the suits. Amazing what you can slip past inspections if you have the right piece of paper and know the magic words…”

He falls quiet, the words trailing in the air and tainting it with shadows. Joker seems to stare at the gaps in the air his voice had left. The smile dies on his face. For a moment it’s like Bruce isn’t even there anymore.

And suddenly Bruce knows he cannot leave him like that. 

“Joker,” he calls. 

Joker jerks, but doesn’t look at him. His eyes don’t focus. 

So Bruce calls his name again, louder, and because there’s an opportunity opening up here, he realizes that like it or not, he has to take it. He’d been putting it off long enough as it is. He takes a deep breath and makes himself ask, “At Arkham, did they… Did they make you do things you didn’t want to do?”

Joker shakes himself out of his reverie and laughs even harder, hugging himself, coughing.

“You’re adorable,” he manages.

The sinking feeling sharpens, turns into the hard jolting pain you get when you finally hit the ground. Something fierce sparks in Bruce, fierce and bright and hot. He keeps his mouth shut until the last of the laughter dies in a violent coughing fit, but now he knows he _has_ to press for more, so he tries, 

“Joker? Do you…” Dammit, he doesn’t have the vocabulary for this, nor the training. He’s fumbling in unfamiliar darkness with no nocturnal visors to guide him along. Still, he’s never let that stop him before, so he tries to marshal his resolve and offers quietly, “Can we talk about that? About Arkham? About… About Doctor Lancer?”

For a moment, Joker is silent, pressing his forehead to his bony knees, bare toes curling over the edge of the chair. He likes going barefoot, Bruce notices, even despite the cold. He wonders why that is, and thinks that maybe he ought to have given Joker a fluffier rug.

But of course the thought is a distraction, and a pointless one at that. Bruce steels himself and waits. 

“You dirty hypocrite,” Joker whispers, soft enough that Bruce almost misses it. He giggles again, hugging himself closer.

Then his head snaps up at Bruce and he’s grinning, and it’s like he’s shed a mask, or maybe put on a fresh one. He chirps, “Yeah, we can go outside! Sure. Why not? Maybe I’ll get a tan.”

Bruce watches him until his own heart calms down. He wants to sigh. That bright fierce spark is still burning inside him, but he looks at Joker’s aggressively cheerful smile and thinks, _… Maybe later._

The thought is shaded in relief. And that, in turn, bleeds into guilt.

But Joker clearly doesn’t want to talk about Arkham, and Bruce won’t just bully him into it. Not today. Not until he can offer something substantial in return.

“All right,” he allows. “I’ll make the arrangements.”

“And I want Brucie to visit.”

Bruce hesitates. “Okay,” he says softly.

“Tell him to bring the sleeping pills. I want them from him.”

And Bruce doesn’t know what to make of that, _or_ of that weird stab of hurt which feels like an icicle’s suddenly poked him from the inside.

“Fine,” he says, just short of a snap. 

He’s almost at the door when a thought occurs to him. 

He turns.

“Joker.”

“Yes, sugar-plum?”

Bruce hesitates only a heartbeat before he asks, “Do you know anything about a person who calls themselves Oracle?” 

Joker’s eyes light up in a sharp gleam, and his body uncurls somewhat from its protective squat on the chair. He taps his chin thoughtfully. “I’m guessing you’re not referring to dear old Pythia.”

“No. It’s someone here in Gotham.”

“Oooooh, a new player on the chessboard! What fun!” Joker claps, and for a moment looks genuinely excited, like a shark sniffing blood in the water. “Have you tried beating up Maxie Zeus? He’s got a lock on that whole Greek schtick, maybe it’s one of his little birdies. Why anyone would want to copy _that_ stupid hack is beyond me, but hey, this _is_ Gotham!”

Bruce smirks. “I’m pretty sure that’s not it. Maxie is still locked up.”

“Never stopped _me_ ,” Joker points out in sly delight.

Bruce wants to say, Yes, but you're _you_. He closes his teeth against the words before they can tumble out and sound all wrong. 

“So you don’t know anything,” he ascertains.

“Sorry, pumpkin, can’t help you there.”

“Well.” Bruce turns back to the door. “Goodbye.”

Only when the doors close behind him does he allow himself to breathe. 

 

***

 

He comes back as Bruce that very same night. He brings the sleeping pills and Joker insists on taking them before they start the movie.

“The noise helps,” he explains with a coy smile. 

He settles himself comfortably on the sofa and wraps himself in Reggie the Blanket, and tries to stretch his feet over Bruce’s lap.

“No touching,” Lakeisha Jones snaps.

Joker sighs theatrically and resigns himself to curling his feet under the blanket just by Bruce’s thighs, sticking his tongue out at her. 

The movie starts. Bruce tries to make himself pay attention, but _Snow White_ has never been a particular favorite of his and Joker’s feet aren’t helping — they sneak closer to Bruce inch by inch as the movie rolls, until they press up against his thigh through the blanket. Bruce can feel the toes curling and uncurling as though Joker is trying to _knead_ him, and the thought conjures up mental images so ludicrous that it takes considerable effort not to smile. 

Lakeisha doesn’t seem to notice. She stands silent guard behind the sofa as Joker slowly drifts off to sleep, and she doesn’t say a word when Bruce decides to stay where he is until the screen finally blinks out into total black.

He doesn’t remember anything from the movie.

But he does remember the feeling of Joker’s feet pressing into him, and can’t get it out of his head even as the night carries him over the city rooftops.

 

*** 

 

It’s weeks until they hear from Oracle again, but when they do, Bruce is ready. 

“Batman,” the electronically-altered voice catches Bruce as he’s driving along Kane Memorial Bridge into the city. “Oracle here. I have a tip for you.”

Jason turns to watch him, silent. Bruce can feel the vein in his temple throbbing. He activates tracking algorithms and patches Alfred into the connection as he grits out, “This is a secure channel. I won’t accept any tips from you unless you tell me who you are and how you managed to hack into my systems.”

In response, the dashboard lights up on its own and a map flickers to life on the display screen, pointing to a small dead-end street in Crime Alley. “I could take over the control of your car right now and you wouldn’t be able to stop me,” the voice says. “I didn’t. Make of that what you will. And as you make up your mind, I believe there’s a meeting going on in the spot I just showed you that you might want to check out.”

The screen blinks into a feed from the security cameras in a corner Bruce recognizes, of several thuggish-looking, mostly white men and women, some of them with spiked hair and lurid tattoos and garish makeup, shuffling along down the street. A few of them move with the uncertain gait of people who are trying to conceal firearms under their hoodies and jackets despite having little to no prior experience with guns. They pass the lantern-mounted camera one by one, in what looks to be roughly 5-minute windows, and veer left into the dead-end alley Bruce saw on the map. Then the screen changes again, this time to a series of grainy, pixelated close-ups of the suspects’ faces. The pictures clear. Names and criminal records are matched to some of them.

Bruce’s stomach drops as he realizes, “Joker’s people.”

“Got it in one,” Oracle confirms in their grating, metallic voice. “A few are probably just punks who thought joining a Joker gang would be good for their rep, but most of them worked for the clown at some point. Now here’s the kicker: they’re walking straight into a trap. Cobblepot’s guys planted a fake summons. The clown worshippers think their big guy is back but all they’re gonna get is a gut full of lead if you don’t hurry up.”

“Why me? Why didn’t you send this to the police?” Bruce demands.

“Because you’re the only one who can get there in time.” There is a pause. “And because I don’t want to see good cops gunned down over clown scum.”

“So you’re sending me into the fire instead.”

“You got your fancy bulletproof suit, don’t you? Besides, I thought rushing into the fire is what you do.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Good thing I didn’t expect you to. Feel free to cross-check the feeds with your own resources. But if you don’t want to see a bunch of misguided idiots in black bodybags, I suggest you hurry up. Oracle out.”

“Alfred,” Bruce says as soon as the connection dies. “Did you get all that?” 

“Indeed, sir. Verifying the images as we speak.”

“See if you can track the frequency while you’re at it.”

“Of course, sir. Would you also like me to hack into the Pentagon? Shut down the satellites maybe?”

Jason snorts. Bruce waits for the results, turning and swerving through the traffic as fast as the city allows him. 

“Everything appears to be in order, sir,” Alfred confirms a moment later. “The timestamps on the feeds are from tonight. Updated images show the street to be empty, but I can see a few suspicious-looking individuals crowding around the alley, which seems to give credence to Oracle’s theory. Sir, it… It may already be too late.”

Bruce swallows a curse and slams his foot on the gas pedal.

They can hear the gunshots from the distance as they get closer. There isn’t enough space in the alley to jam the car between the gangsters and their trapped prey. Bruce barks a curt “Stay in the car!” at Jason and launches himself into the firefight, aiming with batarangs to take out as many guns as he can before dropping a smoke bomb into the alley and getting to work.

Jason doesn’t listen to him. He’s out of the car seconds after Bruce and starts to fight his way to the basement, knocking out the gangsters with brutal efficiency.

“Robin, no!” Bruce yells after him, but Jason is already at the door and kicking it open, and somersaulting inside under a spray of bullets.

Bruce keeps fighting off Cobblepot’s grunts as he strains to make out the sounds of struggle in the basement, and as soon as he delivers a knockout blow to the last man standing, he rushes in to help. Blood drips down the stairs. There’s puddles of it inside and Bruce narrowly avoids tripping on it as he rushes to help Jason incapacitate those of the clown gang still swaying on their feet.

It doesn’t take much.

Police sirens wail urgently by the time Joker’s people are tied up and Bruce takes the vitals of the poor bastards lying on the floor. Two of them are dead, blood oozing from fatal bullet holes in their heads and chests, but the others…

The others can still make it. 

That’s gonna have to be enough.

He helps get the bodies on the gurneys and stands by to watch the ambulances carry the injured away, then shortly explains the situation to Montoya, who knows better by now than to try and bring him in for a statement. Jason hovers silently at the back, watching. 

Only when they make their way back to the car does Bruce turn to address him.

“This will not happen again,” he snaps, engine purring into life.

Jason looks out the window. His face scowls at Bruce from the tinted windowpane. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he murmurs.

“You didn’t listen to me. You deliberately disobeyed an order. They had guns, Jason, and your recklessness could have gotten you killed.”

“I bet you never told Grayson to stay in the car.” 

Tension throbs under Bruce’s jaw. “I did. Many times.”

“And did _he_ listen?”

“Why do you think I decided to send him away?”

Jason’s head snaps around to him, demanding, “You saying you gonna fire me too?!” 

“I’m _saying_ you need to be more careful,” Bruce deadpans. “You’re supposed to be assisting me, not creating more problems and endangering yourself in the process. You’re no help at all if I have to worry about your recklessness instead of focusing on the fight.”

“You wanna keep me away from bullets, how about you get me a costume that actually covers me, huh? Or are you broke now that you’re spending all your cash on a murder clown?”

“If you want a new costume, we can talk about this,” Bruce promises through the hot rush in his ears. “But I need you to listen to me and do as I say in the field. When I tell you to stay in the car, you stay in the car, understood?”

“Maybe Grayson let that sort of shit fly,” Jason mutters defensively, “but I thought _I_ was supposed to be your partner. Partners listen to each other, Bruce, it’s not just — it’s not like you’re gonna call all the shots all the goddamn time. You’re not my boss.”

“When we are in the field I am,” Bruce insists. “You’re my responsibility.”

“Last time I checked, _I_ wasn’t wearing a shock bracelet,” Jason spits out, arms folding across his chest. “The only one responsible for me is me.”

Bruce grits his teeth. “You know what you signed up for,” he reminds Jason. “You know the rules. If you can’t follow them…”

“What are you gonna do about Oracle?” Jason asks sharply, angling away from Bruce to stare out the window again. 

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m serious. That’s the second tip from them that turned out solid. What do you figure?”

A sigh builds in Bruce’s mouth, but he keeps it in. “Nothing,” he says quietly. “Not until I manage to crack them.”

“You’re still not going to trust them?”

“This Oracle character has the means to take remote control of the Batmobile. Of course I don’t trust them.”

“Hmmmmm.”

“Jason,” Bruce presses, “is there something you want to tell me?”

“Oh, I wanna tell you plenty,” Jason murmurs. “But you ain’t gonna listen to none of it.”

“I _mean_ about Oracle.”

“No.” Jason slumps in his seat, some of the prickliness deflating. “I know nothing.”

At that point, a police report about a robbery in Diamond District crackles through the radio, and Bruce has no choice but to shelf this conversation for another time. But Jason won’t escape it, and seems resigned to his fate as he resumes the silent treatment for the rest of the night.

 

***

 

“Any luck tracking the Oracle broadcast?” Bruce asks when they make it back to the cave some hours later, windswept, irritable and bone-tired.

Jason is already marching up the stairs, still in his costume. Bruce watches him go until Alfred clears his throat.

“Alas, I’m afraid our new hacker friend is rather skilled at hiding their footprints,” he says.

Bruce looks to the computers. “Are you sure you’ve tried everything?”

“Quite sure, though I know you will stay up for the rest of the night double-checking anyway,” Alfred replies wryly.

Bruce doesn’t try to contradict him.

But he doesn’t fare any better than Alfred, and by the time he finally unglues himself from the monitors and drags his exhausted body upstairs, he’s ready to interrogate every single louse in the city for anything resembling a lead.

But maybe he doesn’t have to. He remembers Jason’s stubborn silence, thinks back to how Jason watched him during Oracle’s interruption. He falls asleep turning the nagging suspicion over in his mind, and dreams of a mysterious voice telling him he should keep a clear head while Joker laughs and laughs and laughs. 

 

***

 

There is nothing to connect the men they captured in Crime Alley to Cobblepot, and if there is, Cobblepot’s lawyers handle it with their usual white-gloved efficacy. Bruce expected nothing less.

He still stakes out outside the Iceberg Lounge for the whole night after the arrests, making sure Oswald sees him up on the roofs. 

It’s warning enough. 

 

***

 

Bruce keeps his word and starts arranging Joker’s very first venture outdoors a few days later, after a brief consultation with Dr. Mulligan, which boils down to him asking “Is he ready” and her replying “Yes.”

Nothing after that is quite this easy.

First of all, they need more guards. Jim isn’t at all thrilled and grumbles more than his usual fill, but he eventually agrees to station police officers over the Manor grounds along the route he and Bruce map out together, on the condition that they will also have the support of hidden snipers. Bruce tries to fight him on that but Jim refuses to budge, and eventually Bruce surrenders. The memory of the funfair is still much too raw on both their minds. 

The when isn’t as clear-cut either. They need a date that won’t coincide with any events that will require police presence or it will leave Jim short-handed, and there’s also the question of the weather. Sunny days in Gotham are few and far between even in summer - unless the city happens to drown them in heatwaves - and the weather forecasts tend to be wrong more often than not. In this respect Gotham is almost as capricious as Joker himself, and the question of _his_ mood on the day they choose gives Bruce a headache.

Then there’s the how. At first Bruce wondered if maybe there could be a way to let Joker walk on his own, but both Jim _and_ Dr. Mulligan shoot that idea down without a blink. 

“He is nowhere near the point where he can be trusted not to run away,” Dr. Mulligan insists. “Even heavily restrained he can still be a danger to himself and to others.”

“No way am I letting him have free roam of anything,” Jim agrees. 

They discuss other options. Jim pushes for the upward gurney, but eventually they settle on the wheelchair plus straitjacket combo, with Joker’s legs being shackled to the chair so he cannot kick or get out of it. That seems to satisfy both parties and even Alfred appears to be comforted by the decision when Bruce relays it to him, observing,

“Good thing you weren’t planning a picnic, sir. Should the local paparazzi fight their way to the grounds somehow, the pictures of you feeding the clown would cause quite the stir.”

“You’re not helping, Alfred,” Bruce sighs, even as his mind starts buzzing with all the security updates he’s going to need to see to before the big day. The grounds are already pretty much intruder-proof, especially when it comes to the press, but Alfred is right — they cannot possibly allow _anyone_ not authorized to be there to spy even a strand of green hair.

Good grief.

All in all he’s almost relieved when urgent Justice League business pulls him away from the whole logistic nightmare. Fighting off mindless extra-dimensional space monsters gives him some much-needed catharsis and when he punches and punches and punches it feels like he’s punching out some of the helpless frustration with Oracle, with Joker, and with himself. 

“Looks like you needed that, huh,” Clark notices when they’re standing in a steaming pile of space monster carcass.

Bruce breathes out through his nose. The air stinks so bad his stomach rolls in protest, the goo is going to be a nightmare to wash off and he’s going to need three thorough baths before he feels clean again, not to mention the throbbing ache in every single muscle which means that even with his training he’s going to be waking up sore and stiff for at least a week. 

“ _Yes_ ,” he says.

Monsters aren’t _complicated_. He’s almost forgotten how good it feels to punch something uncomplicated, to face a problem that has a clear, simple solution. His head feels light with pure physical fatigue and satisfaction after a job well done, and Bruce basks in it before it can be pushed away by all the trouble he’s managed to leave behind. 

Clark lets him enjoy the feeling in silence. 

Until he ruins it all by saying, “We’re worried about you.”

Bruce sighs. “Who’s we?”

“Well, me, mostly.” Clark looks sheepish. “And Diana. And Hal, though he’ll deny it if you say anything.”

“I don’t want any lectures.”

“And I’m not going to give you one. Just tell me this one thing, Bruce: are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

 _No_ , is what Bruce doesn’t say. It crowds against his teeth anyway, but Bruce knows it’s just a temporary lapse in resolve, brought on by… well, everything. It’ll pass. The confusion, the… discomfort that Joker seems to evoke in him more and more these days… It’ll all pass.

And then he thinks about the feeling of wet hair in his hands, and feet kneading against his thigh. He remembers the moan muffled by bathroom door.

He closes his eyes.

Dammit.

“Look, Gotham is my turf,” he says firmly. “I’m doing things my way. So far, it seems to be working.”

“Well, as long as you’re sure…”

“I am.”

“Okay. Just, maybe let me know when you decide to adopt any more supervillains?”

“What, you want to call dibs?”

Clark snorts, and lets it go.

They stand in silence again, but though Bruce tries to summon back the post-battle glow, it’s no use — the lightness is gone. Instead his head is full of green hair and sharp red smile again, and his stomach goes tight, and the headache starts to throb in warning just under his skin. 

There’s still so much to do… 

“You can trust Oracle,” Clark says suddenly.

Bruce glares at him. “What?”

“She’s contacted some of us. She seems to be building some kind of… network, I suppose. For the crimefighters. A database and emergency hotline and… stuff.”

Bruce thinks about this. “She,” he echoes.

Clark smiles, and Bruce knows the use of the pronoun wasn’t accidental. “She,” he confirms.

“So you know who she is.”

“I know she has good intentions.”

“And that’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“Afraid so. Sorry, but if she doesn’t want to reveal herself to you or anyone else, it’s not my business to interfere.” Clark shrugs, an apologetic smile lingering on his mouth, and Bruce turns away, accepting his explanation. Frustrating as it may be, he understands and respects the importance of keeping other people’s secrets. He would have done the same.

Still, the fact that Clark would vouch for this person… 

It helps. Not by much, but it does. Some of the frustration connected with Oracle’s sudden appearance in his life eases, his thoughts clear, and though he isn’t going to trust her anytime soon, he realizes he can give himself some time to crack this particular case.

Especially since, he thinks, he finally has a lead.

“Thank you,” he says after a moment, and Clark replies with a grin and a fond pat to Bruce’s shoulder.

“No problem. Just, remember you’re not alone, okay? I know you and the Joker have a… special sort of relationship, but if you ever need help, just —”

“You worry about Luthor,” Bruce tells him, gently shrugging off Clark’s hand. “Let me worry about Joker.”

Clark doesn’t try to bring the topic up again, and Bruce is grateful. 

He has more than enough on his plate as it is.

 

***

 

When they finally come for the clown on what Bruce has started to refer to as Day Zero, for a moment it looks like all their plans are going to have to be scrapped. Even though Joker has been warned and prepped thoroughly about what the day will entail so there would be no surprises, he still studies the small invading army of police officers trooping into his living space with no small degree of alarm and actually retreats into the far corner of the parlor, fingers twitching furiously. Bruce, wearing his Wayne persona like the expensive suit and million-dollar smile that come with it, has to force himself to stay still and not come up to him to comfort him in front of all these people, and makes himself watch silently as forward steps Dr. Mulligan, smiling her distant, professional smile.

“We don’t have to do this today,” she assures Joker. “If you want us to go, just say so.”

Joker holds her gaze with an expression he’s keeping uncharacteristically blank, which, in Bruce’s experience, means that something is very, very wrong. Then he shoots a suspicious look out the window, where the weather, thank God, remains mercifully clear and devoid of rain, with just a few gray-tinged clouds ambling across the bright blue sky. 

Then, his eyes find Bruce, and stay there. After a heartbeat some of the light seems to trickle back into his gaze. His face relaxes.

“Let me get dressed,” he says. A grin tries to fight its way onto his face and though it looks skittish, Bruce can feel some of the tightness in his own chest give.

Joker disappears into his bedroom. No one speaks, but the collective relief in the parlor is still palpable, and it feels like everyone released their breaths all at once. Bruce shares in the feeling. The thought of having to organize the entire thing from scratch at some other date is _not_ a pleasant one and for a moment it looked like a very real possibility, but now at least one variable has been neutralized, and Bruce steels himself for…

… well, for everything else that can still go wrong.

“You really don’t have to be here, Mr. Wayne,” Dr. Mulligan tells him quietly, coming to stand at his side. “We can handle this.”

“He asked for me,” Bruce reminds her. And it’s true — Joker was very emphatic about how much he wanted “Brucie dearest” to accompany him on his very first ‘stroll’. There was foot-stomping and hand-waving and even the threat of another hunger strike. Which made things so much easier for Bruce, who _was_ going to be there one way or another, watching from the trees as Batman if he had to. 

Dr. Mulligan sighs. “Indeed. I just hope you didn’t take that as a compliment.”

Bruce shrugs at her and smiles, and she rolls her eyes. She exchanges looks with Lakeisha. _Men_ , they both seem to be saying, or, quite possibly, _Rich white men_. Bruce had no idea the two of them had any sort of rapport, but now he feels ganged up on, and wonders if he should worry. 

Joker keeps them waiting for what feels like a full hour before he finally emerges in the full glory of his nicest suit, painstaking make-up and white satin spats over gleaming black shoes. He dances through the door, poses dramatically at the threshold and blows Bruce a kiss. 

“Now I’m ready to party,” he announces, and his voice sounds as strong and assured as ever now that he has his costume on and has had some time alone to work himself up into performance headspace.

“All right, pretty boy, let’s get you saddled up,” says Benjamin Carter, approaching Joker with the wheelchair. Next to him Lakeisha steps forward with the straitjacket, and though her face stays clear and determined her body is tense, poised for a fight. The pair of them are covered by Gordon’s police who have their guns trained on Joker. He regards each of them with a delighted grin, gaze sliding from one face to another as though he’s trying to commit them all to memory as he dramatically thrusts his arms to the sides.

His audience. His spectacle. The officers have been trained for this, they are all aware that Joker hasn’t had anyone to threaten for a long time now and they are trying to not let him phase them, but unease thickens in the air anyway, charging with each passing second. Joker’s gaze touches each of them like a lewd promise and a threat all at once, truly predatory like Bruce hasn’t seen him in months, and he _senses_ the effect he has on the people in the room — Bruce can see it in the way his eyes light up, in the way his lips stretch upward. 

He basks in the attention and the fear like a cat in a pool of sunlight. Bruce’s hands itch, and he chants in his head to make himself keep still. 

Joker knows the consequences. He won’t fuck this up for himself if he knows what’s good for him. This is all just — spectacle, a warm-up act, indulging old habits. It won’t go any further than this.

Not if Bruce has anything to say about it.

“Mind that you don’t get too frisky, ma’am,” Joker tells Lakeisha when she gets close enough, winking at her, licking over his bottom lip. “My boyfriend’s watching.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she tells him in a voice dripping ice. “Hold still.”

“I thought you said the Bat was your boyfriend,” Carter grunts as he helps his partner manhandle Joker’s spindly arms into the jacket.

“I have plenty of love to go around,” Joker explains happily. “Want some, big guy?”

He jerks forward with his tongue sticking out, like he wants to lick Carter’s temple. Every gun in the room clicks in warning as Carter pulls a disgusted face shoves him away, and Joker laughs so hard tears bead in his eyes.

“Now, Joker,” Dr. Mulligan snaps, putting her hands on her hips. “Do I need to remind you what we agreed on?”

Joker attempts to school his face into an expression of wounded innocence. The effect is somewhat spoiled by the bouts of giggles still hiccuping out of him. “Just a harmless little prank,” he coos imploringly. “I haven’t had a proper audience in _ages_ , Doc!”

“One more stunt like that and we’re done,” she warns him, and in that moment she resembles nothing so much as a kindergarten teacher, about to tap her foot at a naughty child who doesn’t want to eat his veggies. “Leave the guards alone. They’re working hard enough as it is.” 

Joker turns to wink at Bruce again, then gives his doctor a meek nod, dropping his head in submission. Lakeisha repeats her command to hold still, and miraculously, Joker does, though not without a meaningful grin at Carter. He stands there patiently and only fidgets a little as the two guards finally maneuver him into the straitjacket and onto the chair, and he giggles when they shackle his ankles.

“All bases covered, huh?” he throws over his shoulder at Carter. “All this attention! I’m blushing!”

“Don’t get used to it,” Carter snaps. He looks at Bruce. “You sure you want to do this, Mr. Wayne?”

“Yes,” Bruce says, looking at Joker. “Let me.”

He comes up to the wheelchair and stands behind it, and Dr. Mulligan joins him, taking up a position on Joker’s right flank.

“Ready?” she asks, addressing the question to her patient.

Joker takes a deep breath and looks first at her, then at Bruce — craning his neck as he does — then back at his doctor, and finally at Bruce again.

“Remember what we talked about,” Dr. Mulligan says softly.

Joker’s breath releases. His smile sets into place as though it never left.

“Come on, slowpokes, we’re burning daylight! Onwards!”

Bruce looks at Dr. Mulligan, who gives him a short nod. So do the guards. The police officers slowly lower their guns and clear the way for them, and Bruce starts to push an excited Joker out of the room and into the corridors beyond for the very first time.

Alfred is nowhere to be seen, though Bruce knows he’s watching. So is Jason. They’ll know what to do. Joker’s absence will give them an opportunity to clean and update the rooms, and with a little bit of luck, Joker will like what they prepare for him. 

They make an odd little procession as they make their way down the third floor corridor and reach the ramp leading down to the gardens: Bruce pushing Joker’s chair at the front and Dr. Mulligan strolling beside them, with a cordon of watchful police closing the ranks in neat rows at a certain distance. Bruce knows by heart the spots for the snipers and the officers stationed all around the grounds in case their prisoner does try to somehow make a run for it, and he hopes Joker won’t be able to spot them. Bruce would never hear the end of it.

He has to be careful as they progress down the ramp. The decline is gentle but the heavy wheelchair tries to respond to the pull of gravity anyway, and Joker is beginning to squirm so hard he makes the wheels rattle. Mercifully they manage to reach the bottom of the ramp with no accidents, and then Bruce pauses, squinting in the sudden onslaught of sunlight. 

It’s a warm morning, and getting warmer still. The air tastes sweet with lilac and mowed grass, and there’s just a hint of rain too, from yesterday’s downpour, which has teased out stark, bright colors that thrive this far from Gotham's murk and dirt. The birds sing in their nests up on the roofs and the branches on the edge of the woods, chipper little melodies which bleed into a soothing harmony. Stains of shadow glide over the neat lawns as lazy wind gusts shepherd the clouds across the sky. Joker sits directly in the way of the sun now, and Bruce looks down to see it catch in his hair as he jerks his head to the side.

“Anyone got sunglasses?” he pleads, trying to shake his hair into a curtain to block out the light, to meager effect.

“Sorry,” Bruce says. “We’ll put the sun behind us in a moment.”

He pushes the chair. The gravel rustles under the wheels. Joker keeps fidgeting until Bruce steers him onto one of the winding garden paths, and as he does, the lilac explodes around them in a burst of smell and color, splashes of vivid purple and green in the bushes flanking them on both sides.

And Bruce hates himself for the way his heart begins to pound in anticipation, because this particular path was his idea. He thought these colors in particular might appeal to Joker, maybe ease him away from potential sensory overload with their familiarity. He slows down, notices that Joker’s squirming is beginning to subside, and waits with his heart rattling, suddenly altogether too tender-raw.

For a moment, Joker doesn’t say anything.

Then, he sneezes.

“Ooops,” he says sheepishly, grinning up at Bruce and his doctor. “Sorry. Someone bless me before my soul leaks out through my ears?”

“I don’t think that’s quite how it works,” Dr. Mulligan says coolly. 

If Bruce could, he would have slapped his forehead. “Please don’t tell me you’re allergic.”

“He’s not,” Dr. Mulligan cuts in as Joker opens his mouth. “He’s just trying to mess with you.”

“Awwwwwwwww, Doc,” Joker pouts. “So determined to ruin my fun.”

“Let’s just move on, shall we?” Bruce offers, feeling all at once tired, silly and — it has to be said — somewhat disappointed.

“Not quite yet,” Joker protests. “Brucie dearest, do you think you could get one of them pretty flowers for me? It’s my color.”

Bruce breathes out and makes himself smile down at Joker, thinking, _That little shit is_ playing _me_.

But of course he can’t call him out on the mind games. Not as clueless, good-natured I Just Want To Help Wayne. And not without admitting that he’d been eager for a positive reaction from Joker in the first place.

So he forces a laugh and turns to Dr. Mulligan, asking, “If you’re really not allergic I guess I see no harm in that?”

She nods, so Bruce steps away from the chair for a moment to pick a plume of the fragrant purple flowers, one which isn’t currently surrounded by buzzing wasps and bees. He snaps gently at the base of the twig and comes up to stand in front of Joker’s chair.

“Where do you want it?” he asks.

“In my hair,” Joker decides at once. He bats his eyelashes at Bruce. “That way we’ll keep the color scheme intact, geddit? It’ll look like the lilac is growing out of my head!” He giggles. “Pretty please?”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “It’s going to bother you in a minute or two,” he warns. “And it’s not exactly the kind of flower to —”

Joker only grins. “Then I’ll ask you to fix it somewhere else,” he reasons. “I’m sure you’ll find a way, clever boy.”

Bruce sighs. “Fine.” 

He gently collects the hair behind Joker’s left ear. As his fingers brush against the soft shell and the skin behind it he has to suppress a shiver, remembering the last time he touched Joker this intimately, and Joker makes it even worse by closing his eyes and exhaling deeply like he’s thinking about the exact same thing.

Behind them, Lakeisha taps her foot warningly on the gravel, raising one of the Arkham-issue charged cattle prods. Bruce shoots her a grin he hopes looks placating and makes it as quick as he can, managing to arrange Joker’s hair so that the plume of lilac stands up in it. It’s not going to hold if the chair hits a bump or if Joker fidgets too hard, but for now, it’ll have to do.

Bruce steps away, ignoring the tingle in his fingers. He gets behind the chair again. “Ready?”

“I was born ready, bay-bay!” 

And so Bruce starts pushing the chair along the path, into the cloud of overwhelming smell and insect buzz. The police keep their distance behind them, as per prior agreement. It’s not exactly privacy, especially not with Dr. Mulligan keeping to Joker’s right, but at least Joker can’t see the officers trailing after them and that seems to make him… chatty.

Once they leave the corridor of lilac and venture into the gardens proper, he starts to ask about the other flowers. He wants to know all the names and then makes up stories about them, ludicrous, often violent stories, and he watches his companions closely to gauge out their reactions. Dr. Mulligan stays quiet and mostly distances herself from the conversation, so the responsibility to keep Joker distracted falls on Bruce, a task which, he realizes, he doesn’t really mind.

“Peonies,” he explains patiently. “It’s not their time yet but in a few weeks they’re going to be in full bloom and then they’re going to look beautiful. There’s around 30 confirmed species though the scientists still argue about several. They’re native to Europe, Asia and Western North America. They were especially cultivated in China, where they used them for flavoring. And this, here, is the Peruvian lily, Alfred loves it because of the color. The asters look delicate but they’re actually very sturdy and can grow on almost any type of soil, and…”

He keeps talking. Soon Joker doesn’t interrupt him at all and only opens his mouth to prompt him for more, and Bruce lets himself get carried away by the knowledge he didn’t know he still had. It’s good to find out that he still remembers everything he learned all those years ago, when he was still a child crying in the dark and needing something to help him stop… thinking. Back when he decided to learn and memorize all the names for the flowers Alfred tended to, so he could help, so he could get _busy_. Back when he collected books about plants and birds in their region, so he could walk around the grounds with Alfred and point and categorize, This is the golden finch, this is the woodpecker, this is the mourning dove…

Back when the simple act of naming and assigning helped him believe that the world could still make sense.

Back when those simple walks made him feel like he could still be close to _someone_. Back when the connection with Alfred, and with the garden his family had tended, was…

Everything.

The nostalgia creeps up on him before he can stop it and lodges something lumpy, prickly, at the back of his throat. His eyes don’t burn, thank God, but it’s difficult to push that lumpy thing down, and even more difficult to stop expecting to hear his mother’s soft laughter as they turn towards the rosebushes which she used to look after personally.

Dammit. Bruce doesn’t _need_ those memories today. He doesn’t need… all of that. What he does need is to keep his mind clear, focused, _ready_ —

“Say, Brucie, how come you know so much about gardening?” Joker asks. He stretches to let his head hang upside-down over the edge of the chair so he can look up at Bruce with the grin of the Cheshire cat, upsetting the lilac plume, which falls to the ground.

Bruce picks it up and slides it into the collar of the straitjacket, trying to ignore Joker’s smile, which looks like he can read Bruce’s mind and has just found the perfect spot to tickle. 

Which is absurd, Bruce knows. His hands still tighten on the handles of the chair.

“I learned,” he says. “I wanted to help Alfred take care of the place.”

Dr. Mulligan turns her sharp eyes to him. Bruce pretends he didn’t notice.

“That after your mommy and daddy got gunned down?” Joker wants to know.

Bruce sighs. The tight lump seems to grow. “Yes,” he admits, “well done.” 

“Did it help?” Dr. Mulligan asks softly as Joker giggles.

Bruce glances at her and tries on a tight smile, which he imagines she sees right through. “Sometimes,” he says. “Not much that _can_ help, really. But it kept me busy. It gave me something to do.”

“A distraction?” Dr. Mulligan guesses.

Bruce lets his gaze drop down, to the path in front of them. “I guess,” he whispers. “But then…”

“It made you feel guilty for seeking out distractions in the first place?”

The smile hurts when Bruce’s face settles into it. _Now_ his eyes are starting to burn, and he tries to shake his head clear of the ache, sighing. “Yeah,” he agrees in a voice which sounds entirely too small. “Something like that.”

The doctor looks like she wants to say something else, maybe ask more questions. _Please, no_ , Bruce thinks, _I don’t want to talk about it. Any of it. And especially not with Joker listening._

Joker chooses this moment to cheerfully tell them, “I’m pretty sure I killed _my_ parents.”

“Really.” Dr. Mulligan’s voice is icy. “Last month you told me you didn’t know them and grew up in an orphanage.”

“Well, I might have!” Joker insists. “I mean, if I killed them of course I’d end up there, that’s just common sense.”

“And last week you tried to convince me you grew up on a farm and ran away from home when your parents tried to set you up with a neighbor girl. You told me the girl’s name was Nisha.”

Joker chuckles, legs twitching. The chain between the shackles jingles. “That was a good one, wasn’t it?”

“No,” Dr. Mulligan adjusts her glasses, “it wasn’t then and it isn’t now.”

“Awwwwww, come on, Doc! You gotta admit that — squirrel!”

They both look to where Joker tries to point with his chin and see nothing. The grass is clear of any scurrying creatures, fuzzy-tailed or otherwise. Joker checks up on their confused faces and bursts out laughing, so loud that the police officers get noticeably agitated and Bruce even spies some of them reaching for their guns. 

“All right, smart guy, you got us,” Bruce sighs, pushing the wheelchair onward and nodding over his shoulder to show the guards that all is well. 

“That felt good,” Joker boasts, stretching as much as the straitjacket allows him. “But where are the real squirrels? I want to see some squirrels.”

“Maybe we’ll spot some when we get closer to the edge of the woods,” Bruce promises. “They tend to stay away from the gardens most of the time.”

Joker seems to accept this explanation and hijacks the conversation again to draw their attention to a pair of mourning doves, existing ones this time, which calmly peck the ground in the shadow of the small stone fountain not too far from where they are. The birds seem to put Joker in a romantic mood and he starts singing under his breath, voice rising over the quiet hum of the gravel and the whisper of the fountain.

“Stop for a bit, Brucie,” he asks after a moment. “Let’s watch them for a while.”

Bruce nods. He pushes the chair a little closer to the nearest iron bench and he and Dr. Mulligan both sit in a warm puddle of sunlight. They watch the birds as they hop around the garden in their patient quest for food, and listen to Joker humming.

“Stars shining bright above you. Night breezes seem to whisper, I love you…”

And, for a while at least, things are almost… peaceful. Almost, if one can forget about the presence of the police and the snipers, and somehow overlook the straitjacket and the shackles. Which Bruce can’t. Nor does he want to, he reminds himself sternly.

But the day really _is_ warm, and the smell of late Spring and fresh flowers glides enticingly in the air, and the fountain hums a tranquil beat to Joker’s song.

Bruce lets his eyes fall closed, suddenly tired under the weight of his own eyelids. They feel hot. He rubs them, and lets himself breathe in deeply, the flowery scent caressing his nose.

He thinks, _I should come here more often_.

Joker keeps singing. His chain jingles as he taps his foot to the rhythm. They don’t move from the bench for quite a while.

But then the mourning doves decide to take flight and shoot off towards Gotham, and the clown absolutely insists that he needs to see at least one squirrel before going back, and so, like it or not, Bruce wheels him off the path and onto the grass closer to the woods. He lets Joker strain his eyes as he glances at the watch. 

They should be getting back soon.

But Joker, as if sensing his thoughts, demands to be wheeled further along the edge of the woods, and then back, and then back again. The squirrels, he insists, think of the squirrels, Brucie! Bruce looks at Dr. Mulligan and she nods, clearly thinking along the same lines.

Joker is stalling.

“We really do need to be getting back now,” Dr. Mulligan tells Joker when he demands to go back to the garden to see if he can get a butterfly to sit on his nose. 

“Five more minutes,” Joker pleads. “If I can’t see a squirrel at least let me watch the butterflies.”

“We can do that another time,” Bruce offers. “We could bring some food for the squirrels, too.”

“And the ducks in the pond?” Joker asks hopefully.

“Yes,” Bruce agrees, “and the ducks.”

“And the other birds?”

“Sure. But now —”

“I don’t want to go back yet,” Joker insists, shooting a resentful look at the Manor looming behind them.

“It’s not really up for negotiation, I’m afraid,” Bruce explains, trying to sound regretful. “The guards have other duties they need to attend to, you know.”

“Let them. I don’t want them here anyway.”

“Joker —”

“Fifteen more minutes,” Dr. Mulligan interrupts. “I think we can allow this much, don’t you, Mr. Wayne?”

“I —” Bruce looks at her, surprised. Then he looks at Joker. “Well, if _you_ think it’s all right, Doctor…”

Joker shoots Bruce a smile of such profound gratitude, fondness and _affection_ that Bruce has to look away, up at the graying sky. The clouds have thickened in the meantime, blotting out the sun almost entirely, and the wind has picked up too, chillier than before.

Joker doesn’t seem to notice. He picks another song to hum as Bruce wheels him toward the garden, and he decides he wants to stop by the fountain again, this time pointing to the beds of forget-me-nots which line the stone edge in a graceful little circle of blue.

“Can I have some for my room?” he asks. He looks straight at Bruce. “They remind me of your eyes.”

“You’re a menace,” Bruce tells him, and he can’t quite conceal the note of fondness that creeps into his voice. “You know you can’t have anything to put them in. They’ll wither.”

“I can put them in one of the books to dry.”

“Well…” Bruce looks to Dr. Mulligan, who lets out a sigh and shrugs as if to say, _It’s your funeral._ He looks back to Joker. “Okay,” he says.

He picks up a few blossoms and affixes them next to the plume of lilac by Joker’s neck. He’s gotten too close, though — and Joker thanks him by stealing a kiss to his cheek before Bruce can pull away. 

“Thank you, gorgeous,” he whispers, and giggles like a giddy schoolgirl.

Bruce touches his cheek. He can’t see, but he’s pretty sure there’s a smear of color there, the same bright red as Joker’s lips.

He forces himself to laugh because that’s what Wayne would do. He shakes his head at Joker and murmurs “You fiend,” good-natured, indulgent, unphased. Inside, though, he’s anything but, and the spot Joker kissed seems to _burn_ , and it doesn’t matter that it was hardly a peck, no more than a graze of the lips — somehow Bruce knows he’s going to feel it on his skin for the rest of the day. 

And then things get even worse.

“All right, that’s enough,” Carter commands, forcing his way to the front with Lakeisha. He grabs the handles of Joker’s wheelchair. “We’re taking you back inside, funny boy.”

“Brucie and Doc said fifteen minutes!” Joker protests, but Carter only glowers down at him and starts to push the chair away from the fountain. 

“Mr. Carter, wait,” Bruce tries, noting the unsettling gleam in Joker’s eyes. “It was nothing, just a little joke, I didn’t —”

“I’ve seen this one bite a man’s ear off, Mr. Wayne.”

Bruce pauses and looks at Joker, who shrugs as if to say, _Well, what’s a little ear-biting between friends?_ He touches his cheek again, feeling vaguely sick, and wants to kick himself.

_Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid._

Still, he did promise, so he opens his mouth to argue, especially since he really, really _doesn’t_ like the brightness in Joker’s eyes.

He’s too late. Joker decides to take things into his own hands, and ruins everything when he twists to look Carter in the eye.

“Benjy Carter, you old dog, how ya been?” he chirps happily. “I _knew_ I recognized your broken schnoz! How’s the wife? How’s the kids? They still live in that dingy old place on the corner of Fisher?”

“One more word about my family, clown —”

Joker twists his entire body to reach behind him and snaps his teeth around Carter’s right hand.

At that point, without the cape and cowl, Bruce can’t do anything anymore but watch as the chaos unfolds: the police jumping to pry Joker off, blood trickling down Carter’s hand as he punches Joker in the face, Joker laughing, his teeth bloodied, even when Lakeisha shocks him in the legs with two charged cattle prods. It isn’t long before he slumps in the chair like a loose rag with the last of the sparks jumping around his body, bruise purpling around his left eye, blood dripping down his mouth.

“Field trip over,” Lakeisha growls, panting, coming up to take over the handles of the wheelchair. She gathers the hair from her face and tucks it behind her ear. “Anyone got a problem with that?”

“No,” Bruce manages, looking at Joker. He’s still twitching in the chair and laughing softly. The flowers in his collar crumble, completely fried. 

“It’s almost time for his meds anyway,” Dr. Mulligan judges. She comes up to Joker, cool, collected, frowning. “We’ll talk about your behavior during our next session, young man, make no mistake,” she warns.

Joker ignores her. When he lifts his head by an inch or so, it is to seek out Bruce. He’s breathing heavily but still smirking, and manages to look predatory, smug and strangely hollow all at once.

“Now that…” he pants, “was a bite. Benjy… should be smart enough… to know the difference.”

He licks the blood off his lips. Lakeisha’s face turns into a grimace of fury and she pushes the wheelchair with a jerk that nearly has Joker toppling out of it. He reacts by struggling to turn to her and attempting to talk about _her_ wife — how the hell he knows anything about Lakeisha _or_ the others, Bruce is going to have to find out — but she cuts him off by banging one of the deactivated cattle prods against the frame of the chair.

“I’m gonna tranquilize you, you son of a bitch,” she growls. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Dr. Mulligan says. “Will it, Joker?”

“Oh, I think I’ve had my fun.” Joker’s voice is quiet, hoarse. “It’s enough for now that Mrs. Jones knows I know where she lives.”

Lakeisha swears. Dr. Mulligan starts reprimanding her patient and he laughs again, still quiet but somehow all the more terrifying for it. 

Bruce steps forward. “Should I come with you?” he asks, and God, it’s a struggle to keep his voice Wayne and not Batman. 

“I think it’s best if you stay here, Mr. Wayne,” Dr. Mulligan tells him in a voice that makes it clear this is not a suggestion. “You’ve done enough for one day.”

And so Bruce stands in his spot watching them go, watching the police cordon closing ranks behind them, and slumps down onto the bench. He hides his face in his hands for a moment and rubs his temples, listening to the silvery trickle of the fountain.

…Christ, what a disaster. And the day had been going so well, too. They could have made it without any of that if not for the damned forget-me-nots…

If not for Bruce forgetting himself and getting too close.

He looks up at the fountain, watches as the water rises and falls. 

He starts analyzing the day piece by piece to figure out what went wrong.

Alfred finds him some time later still going at it, still sitting on the bench and examining different what-ifs in his head until he wears them thin. He clears his throat quietly and asks, “May I…?”

Bruce nods. His mind feels like a squeezed sponge by now. “How did it go?” he asks.

“Well. The good news is that our guest didn’t attack anyone else, though I have to say he very much looked like he wanted to.”

Bruce sighs. His heart aches. “And the bad news?”

“He… got agitated again. Started calling for Batman, that he needed to talk to him. It got bad enough that Dr. Mulligan gave the guards the clearance to sedate him. They are feeding him his medicine through the IV drip as we speak, and I understand it’s a stronger dose.”

“Damn it.” Bruce closes his eyes again and presses his hands against them. “I should be there.”

“The doctor and the police are handling it, Master Bruce,” Alfred counters softly. “Your presence is not needed. The clown wouldn’t be conscious to appreciate it anyway.”

“But you said he called for me.”

“Not for you, sir. Not as you are now. He called for Batman. And I’m sure Batman will come see him as soon as he can. Now, though, you wouldn’t be helping anybody.”

“I just —” Bruce breathes deep, and the air trembles on its way out. He presses his hands tighter against his face. Breathes in, and out again. “I thought he was making progress,” he whispers.

Alfred is silent for a moment. Then, he puts his hand on Bruce’s shoulder.

“I’m afraid it’s never that simple, sir,” he reminds him softly. “You _know_ that. Progress is never just a straight line pointing forward. You knew there would be better and worse days when you took him in. And today, you took a big risk, taking him out of his comfort zone, surrounding him with strangers after almost a year of near solitary confinement, giving him attention he hadn’t had in a long time… I don’t pretend to be an expert on matters of the brain, sir, but it’s little wonder that he didn’t manage to stay on his best behavior.”

“I know. I know. Still, I —”

“You couldn’t have predicted that he’d bite someone’s hand, sir.”

“I should have. I _know_ him, Alfred, and yet…”

He swallows the rest of that sentence, and it tastes of salt going down. 

Alfred gives him the time to pull himself together. His hand never leaves Bruce’s shoulder, and Bruce is quietly grateful. They sit there in silence, the fountain humming its steady song. 

Then Alfred says, “On the bright side, sir, they had to sedate him before he got to see his latest toy. Now _you_ get to be the one to present it to him and I have to say, I am very much looking forward to the demonstration.”

For a moment, Bruce is confused, and then he remembers: the squeeze machine. The one he’d ordered to be installed in Joker’s gym while the clown was out in the gardens. 

Well, shit.

He imagines himself as Batman climbing between the heavy rolling pins, telling Joker how to use them, and the mental image is so ridiculous that he barks out a laugh before he can stop it in his mouth. 

And that’s when he hears more footsteps on the gravel and a cheerful voice saying, “Yeah, I’m kinda looking forward to that too.”

Bruce raises his head. Dick is marching along the gravel towards them, a blinding grin plastered firmly on his face and a determined air to his step. He nods at Bruce. 

“Hiya, old man. Quite a show you two put on. Been watching from the trees. You should sell tickets.”

The back of Bruce’s throat is feeling clogged again, but he finds it impossible not to smile in return. “Hello, Dick. Will you…” Bruce hesitates, but Alfred’s hand is squeezing lightly on his shoulder, and he swallows against the doubt. “Will you stay for dinner?” 

Dick regards him with his head cocked, then sighs. “Yeah, sure,” he allows with a smile. “I’ll stay for dinner. We’ve got some catching up to do anyway.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Alfred declares, getting off the bench. “ _Someone_ has to make sure you all get fed.”

“Need help?” Dick offers, but Alfred shakes his head no.

“You two enjoy the weather,” he says. “Let me cook in peace.”

Then, he shoots Bruce a look that says _You’d better not mess this up or else_ and removes himself from the gardens, back straight, hands clasped behind him like a king strolling around his property.

Which, in a sense, he is. 

Dick watches him go for a while, then turns to Bruce. 

“A walk?” he suggests.

Bruce nods, feeling somewhat lighter. He gets off the bench. “A walk.”

 

***

 

Dick goes easy on him at first. They stroll along the gravel paths and Bruce listens as he talks about Bludhaven, the Titans, his plans to join the police force, the criminals he has come up against. He spends a significant amount of time regaling Bruce with tales about the joys of apartment-hunting — “Don’t ever do it, Bruce, it’s a nightmare” — and about the many encounters he’s had with his elderly neighbor lady, who apparently got it into her head that Dick isn’t eating enough and took the task of feeding him upon herself. 

Bruce is grateful. He takes that time to let Dick’s voice balance him, and collects his own thoughts so that when the shoe finally drops, he’s ready.

“So,” Dick says, plopping down onto the grass beside the edge of the pond. “Sorry but I’m afraid I ran out of small talk.”

“That’s all right.” Bruce joins him on the grass, and only spares a single thought towards his pants. He can always get more if Alfred can’t get the stains out. “You can tell me why you’re really here.”

Dick chuckles. “What, can’t I just come over for a family visit with no hidden agenda?”

“Did you?”

“Well, no. But I could!” Dick reads his face, then sighs, and lays down on the grass completely. “No, you’re right. We’re not there yet. But I like to think I made an effort.”

Bruce opens his mouth, then swallows, and admits quietly, “I do appreciate it.”

“Ha.” Dick closes his eyes against the sun. “If only.”

“I do,” Bruce insists. 

Dick is silent for a moment. “It’s nice to hear, anyway,” he admits at length, glancing up at Bruce with a smirk. “So. The clown.”

Bruce sighs. “The clown.”

“Jason called. He told me you went off the deep end and bullied everyone to allow you two to have some quality time all on your own.”

“I didn’t _bully_ anyone, I just —”

“You were just very, very persuasive. Yeah, I know how it goes. Probably better than most,” he adds under his breath. “So what’s the point of all that? Because I know you well enough to know that there’s always a point. I just can’t see it this time and I don’t really blame Jason for missing it too. What’s the deal? You beat him up?”

“What?” Bruce snaps, bristling. “No.”

Dick smiles, like Bruce has just scored some points in a competition he didn’t know he entered. He seems to relax a bit. “I thought so, but it’s nice to have that confirmed. What, then? Why else would you want the guards out of it?”

Bruce hugs his knees. “It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

And so like it or not, Bruce does, explaining quietly about Joker’s hypersensitivity and how he seems to calm down when he’s being touched, and about the research, and Dr. Mulligan’s opinions. He mentions Dr. Quinzel and her proposal. He talks about autism and the squeeze machine and how it could help. Hesitantly, he also mentions the panic attacks and how he dealt with them, and how it’s impacted Joker. He lays it all out much like he did for Gordon, much like he tried to do for Alfred and Jason, and feels so exhausted by the end of it that he barely has the energy to worry about what Dick will say.

Which, at first, is nothing. Dick takes some time to think about it instead of lashing out all at once. 

That’s… something.

“So like,” he starts, “you just, what, hold his hand for an hour? And you say it’s helping?”

“No, not exactly.”

“But it’s about physically touching him.”

“… In a way. When he needs it.”

“When he tells you he needs it?”

“Well, yes, but sometimes he is in no shape to ask for it in so many words. The goal is not to keep up the contact every time, but to be able to make that call when I think it’s necessary.”

“Was it necessary to wash his hair for him?”

“He asked for that specifically.”

“Yeah, okay. But it’s still you making that call even if he doesn’t.”

“He’s a mental patient, Dick,” Bruce reminds him, feeling himself bristling again. “He doesn’t always realize what’s best for him.”

“And _now_ you sound like a controlling parent. Sorry, but you do. What’s best for him? Really?”

“This is why I had the squeeze machine installed for him,” Bruce snaps. “So _he_ can decide whether he wants to relieve the tension with that or…”

“With you?”

Bruce closes his eyes. “Yes.”

“Okay, fine. Choice is good. This is good. But you’re still gonna insist on those private meetings even if he goes with the machine?”

Bruce gives him a cold look. “I am,” he says. “It’s not that easy. From time to time I might still need to interfere outside the parameters they can allow.” 

_Besides, he won’t go just for the machine_ is what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t think he needs to. Dick has come to know Joker pretty well himself, and must realize that the _if_ in his scenario is the size of Wayne Tower.

“Well, I guess we’ll see,” Dick mutters after another spell of charged, heavy silence. “Though I’ll have you know I really, really don’t like it.”

“I suspected you wouldn’t.”

“And you won’t kick him out after he actually bit a dude’s hand?”

“Today was… different,” Bruce tries to explain. “Difficult, for everyone and especially for him. The meds… The stress. I can make _some_ allowances if he promises never to do that again. Of course Carter will be compensated.”

“You gonna consult with the doctor about that?”

“Yes.”

“All right. As long as you’re consulting _someone_ , I guess, just… don’t get carried away.”

“I never do.”

“Sure, Bruce, whatever you say.” Dick pushes himself up, then gets to his feet. “Come on, I’m hungry.”

Bruce follows him up, and slowly, they start on the way back to the Manor in silence. Dick only speaks again when they’re at the door.

“Hey, Bruce?”

“What?”

“You have lipstick on your face.”

He laughs and leaps into the house, leaving Bruce standing there in the doorway and touching his cheek.

 

***

 

There’s still some time until dinner, Alfred informs them. Dick offers to help Alfred set the table and Bruce descends into the cave in the meantime, and takes the opportunity to watch the security tapes.

He makes himself sit through the entire recording, though Joker’s screams are terrible enough to chill his blood. He really _did_ call for Batman, or rather — Batsy, though there is nothing coy or flirty about the pure, unadulterated fear in his eyes which seems to have seized him up out of nowhere. His trashing is terrifying, and so is the way he loses control entirely just before one of the police officers shoots his neck with a tranquilizer dart. 

At least they didn’t resort to electroshocks this time, Bruce thinks, and aches. He kills the recording. It does nothing to stop the screams though — they still bounce off the walls of the cave until his ears overflow.

“Hey, Bruce?” Jason calls, taking a step or two into the cave. “We’re ready to eat. Alfred said to tell you your meat is getting cold and if you don’t like that then you can reheat it yourself.”

Bruce sighs. “I’ll be right there.”

Jason disappears without a word. Bruce glances up at the screens one last time, at the feed which shows Joker in real time, lying comatose on top of the covers on his bed. There’s a good chance he won’t wake up until morning, which, all things considered, is probably for the best.

Bruce turns the feed off and stands up, and each step he takes makes him feel a hundred years old.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: we're starting to seriously dig into the problems at Arkham, and as such, entering a very murky territory of abuse and violence and even sexual harrassment. Arkham is a prison-like institution and canonically corrupt to the core, so it's going to be ripe with the problems normally plaguing prisons, including the ugliest stuff. Glossing over it would be dishonest in a story that tries to investigate the questions of ethics, so there's going to be more of that in the following chapters. I want you to be prepared. 
> 
> In other HWA news, I did a very rough [floor plan for J's rooms](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/145968228433/ontarom-dracze-a-reader-asked-me-for-the-floor) which I hope will be helpful if you had trouble picturing how the place is set up. 
> 
> As usual, many thanks to [mitzvah](http://mitzvahmelting.tumblr.com) for all the help and brainstorming <3
> 
> Enjoy!

Dawn finds Bruce in the cape and cowl, sitting on the edge of Joker’s bed.

“Sir, please,” Alfred insists through the speakers. “This is exceeding even your quota for ridiculous behavior. You _need_ to rest.”

Bruce watches the darkness slowly drip off Joker’s face as, outside, the sun begins to poke first tentative holes in the murk of the night. He says, “No. I need to be here when he wakes up.”

“What you need is at least six hours of proper rest and a good warm breakfast.”

Bruce thinks about the cries recorded on the security tapes the day before. He stays right where he is.

“ _Sir._ ”

Bruce takes a deep breath.

“I appreciate your concern, Mr. Pennyworth, but it is not needed. I know what I have to do,” he says formally, Batman elbowing his way into his voice despite the fact that he’s sent the guards home early and there is no one there to listen in on them.

“Okay but just so you know, we’re here,” Dick’s voice says. “We’ll be watching.” There is a pause and then, “ _Shit_ I mean, to make sure you’re okay and not, uh, I was not trying to make that sound like a threat, okay? Though it kinda totally sounded like a threat. Dammit. Sorry, this whole business is making me nervous and —”

“What Master Dick is trying to say,” Alfred interjects, “is that we have your back. Should anything happen, Sir.”

“Yeah,” Dick agrees. “That’s right. That’s totally what I wanted to say.”

“Fucking pathetic,” Jason comments from the sidelines, but still close enough to the mic so Bruce can hear.

Bruce raises his head to the nearest camera and nods acknowledgment. He is too worried to let that display of his family being — well, _themselves_ — amuse him, but he appreciates it all the same, and slices carefully at the edges of this moment to preserve it and store it away to warm his heart later, when he’s ready to let it. 

Then he lets his gaze drop again and watches as the strands of Joker’s hair, spilled as they are over the pillow in a mess of curls, grudgingly shed the vague gray the night gave them to replace it with richer and richer green.

And he thinks, Joker was right. It _is_ eerily quiet in his rooms. The Manor itself is ancient and as enthusiastic about conversing with its inhabitants as all old houses are, but the soundproofing here means that even the familiar groaning of the woodwork and the soft tapping of footsteps get absorbed into the walls. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Like a hostage situation in which Joker is, for once, not the perp, and isn’t that ironic? As a result, all Bruce can hear now is the soft brush of air going in and out through Joker’s nose. He can’t help but focus on it, and count in his head, letting the sound grow and grow until it presses against the walls of the room like it’s trying to push Bruce out. 

He still doesn’t move from the bed regardless, and waits in what now feels like an act of spite more than anything else. He lets his hand lie there on top of the covers six inches away from Joker’s and not an inch closer, even though his eyes are drawn to the gooseflesh breaking out on the clown’s white skin. 

Idly, he imagines his own cape draped over Joker’s body, and isn’t quite fast enough to shut the image down before it hooks into his brain. His stomach tingles. His fingers want to stretch, just a little, to breach the distance, to see what would happen. 

Bruce keeps his hand rigidly in place and distracts himself by counting Joker’s breaths, and doesn’t notice when his own breathing slows down to match.

Joker first stirs when the sky spills into the deep periwinkle halfway point between purple and blue, not quite ready to commit, the shy peeking sun still undecided whether it should shine on Gotham at all. It starts with a twitch of one eyelid, a muscle spasm near the mouth, the pinky finger jerking into a rapid curl-uncurl. Bruce watches Joker’s eyes twitch, pulling the skin around them taut as they struggle to open before they abandon the effort altogether. The clown shifts to push himself onto his side, releases a deep breath, hugs the pillow close to his face and relaxes, all this with his eyes stubbornly closed.

It looks like he’s about to go back to sleep, and Bruce suddenly doesn’t know what to _do_. Does he call out, alert Joker to his presence? Or should he just — go, come back again later? Dr. Mulligan would probably say to leave Joker be considering how little sleep he gets on the whole. That would be the sensible thing to do.

But then, before Bruce can make up his mind, Joker’s nostrils flare. His eyes still shut, he sniffs the air like a hound catching wind of a fox, or maybe the other way around.

He whispers, “Bats?” 

Bruce holds his breath.

“Joker.”

“Huh?” Joker cracks one eye open, searching. It falls on Bruce and widens somewhat, bloodshot, struggling to focus. “Not a dream, then,” he croaks with effort, everything about him sticky with the kind of deep sleep only sedatives can bring. “Wuh, what are you doing here?”

Bruce’s stomach gives a sharp lurch. “You called for me.”

“I did?”

“Yesterday.” Bruce hesitates. “The garden. Don’t you remember? They took you back in and you called for me, and then the guards —”

“Shhhhh.” Joker closes the one eye again and presses his head into the pillow, hard. “Shhhhhh.”

Bruce isn’t sure if Joker is trying to hush him or the buzz in his own head, but either way, he gives him time, making himself sit still. Joker’s hands come up to massage his head, questing, insistent, like he can push the fingers through the skin of his scalp and use them to physically tease the memories out.

Bruce’s own fingers itch, and he curls them over the bedsheets. 

Eventually Joker asks, “Batsy?”

“Yes.”

“Do me a favor and go to the parlor.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m asking you nicely.”

“I’m not sure you should —”

“Now. Please.”

Bruce takes a long look at him, then gets off the bed. He makes it to the doorway and lingers there, giving Joker a chance to call him back in, but the clown never does.

So Bruce leaves him there curling in on himself and frantically pressing his face to the pillows. He stalks over to the sofa and sits down, settling in to wait, and as he does, he can’t quite rid himself of the keen sting of —

Disappointment. 

Which is ridiculous. Bruce has absolutely no reason at all to feel disappointed in Joker’s reaction to seeing him. None at all, except…

Except that Joker _had_ called for him. He had wanted to see Batman so badly he’d worked himself into an episode. So then, why would he kick him out now? Why would he act like Bruce had done something wrong by heeding his call and coming to see him?

Bruce thinks back to the scene and realizes that, okay, maybe hovering over him as Joker slept may not have been the optimal way to go about this. But then he remembers the kiss on the cheek from the day before, Joker asking that Bruce put the flowers in his hair. The — the shower. All the pet names, affectionate smiles and gestures, all the free, _enthusiastic_ expressions of gratitude. Ever since Joker came to live here he’s always been more than ready to express his appreciation of both Wayne and Batman with very little restraint, and it’s not that Bruce got so used to it that he’s come to _expect_ it, but…

 _Liar_ , hisses the voice in Bruce’s head that activates sometimes when the rest of his mind is too busy rationalizing to keep it under lock and key. _You totally expected it. You thought he’d swoon over how romantic and considerate you were being and you’re grumpy he didn’t._

Bruce can feel the rest of him rebelling. Not so, he insists, it’s not like that, even as the voice asks, _Like what?_ and Bruce’s entire face heats up. He forces himself to articulate in his thoughts, _Like I’ve grown so used to the Joker showing me affection that I’ve come to rely on it_. But then the little voice seems to preen in smug satisfaction because as soon as Bruce let the thought crystallize into words, he lost. 

It’s true. God help him, it’s true, and the disappointment still churning in his stomach is evidence enough. Same with the tingle on his cheek where Joker marked him with his lips the other day. He’s been _letting his guard down._ He’s let Joker’s affectations crawl under his skin somehow and settle there, to the point that he almost feels betrayed at their lack.

Dear God, he is a _mess_.

But no, he decides, pressing his hands against the cowl as though this could shut down the conflict twisting his mind raw. He’s just tired. He and Joker both. They’re just… tired, and maybe once Joker has had the chance to get himself back together, he’ll —

The door to the bedroom creaks open and Joker steps into the parlor. 

He’s changed from the good suit the guards left him in yesterday, standing there by the threshold now in his sweatpants and a loose tank top, his feet bare, his skin looking translucent where it intercepts the struggling sunlight. The shadows lick up his arms and settle in the crests of hard wiry muscle which, along with the way the clothes hang off him, only seem to bring out how skinny he is. Dear God, Bruce could easily circle his entire waist with one arm and lift him off the ground with no effort at all…

Something hot and itchy stirs low in Bruce’s stomach. He doesn’t quite manage to stomp out the tingle as he studies Joker’s face, and catches on how yesterday’s lipstick mostly rubbed off except along the outer lines where some of the red still lingers; how old eyeliner smudged around the corners of Joker’s eyes into dusty shadows setting off the natural ones; how mascara has been chipping away in tiny grains that cling to Joker’s lashes. Dawn settles under his eyes and sets off the haze of medication still muddying the normally vivid green. Joker looks a fright, and yet, Bruce can’t help but feel that this unkempt, almost rugged creature before him… Well, that there’s something compelling about it. About Joker being this unstudied, this open, this — raw. 

At the same time though he feels the disappointment sting him all over again, because if he hoped that Joker would be a bit more cordially predisposed after he’s had some time to put himself together, the tension around Joker’s downturned mouth shatters those hopes with one merciless blow. He appears more lucid, but that’s about all that can be said here, and facing him now Bruce finds himself caught in a conflict he never expected or wanted to grapple with.

He only hopes he can keep it all in and out of his face. 

“They drug me?” Joker asks, his voice groggy, thick, hoarse.

“Yes.”

“How long was I out?”

“They sedated you at a little past two pm yesterday.”

Joker looks at his own feet, processing the information. His face breaks into twitches and spasms as lines crack along his forehead, his tired eyes closing in concentration, and Bruce can practically trace the sluggish progress his thoughts make laboring to churn against the chemical sludge in his brain.

“Did you watch me sleep the whole time?” Joker demands.

“No.” Bruce watches his face, considers. “Only for a little while,” he lies.

“Hah!” It’s a bark instead of a laugh, humorless, sharp. The smirk Joker cracks is much the same. “I suppose you expect me to gush over how sweet that is,” he minces. “My Dark Knight, so gallant, so caring, watching over his pale traumatized bride.”

“You’re not my bride,” Bruce protests even as heat explodes in his cheeks again at the realization just how close to home Joker’s words hit.

“Precisely, Dracula. So do me a favor and next time this happens? Don’t. Don’t just sit there and fucking watch me sleep. This place is Big Brother enough as it is.”

“I only wanted to make sure you were okay,” Bruce snaps, grasping to relocate some of his dignity. “You _called_ for me. I assumed you’d want me here when you wake up.”

“Then next time kindly _assume_ that when the quacks put me under for the better part of the day, I might want some time to myself. To put the world to rights again without you breathing down my neck when I’m not ready to… entertain.”

Right. Right. Bruce nods tightly and says, “Fine. If that’s what you want.”

“How gracious. Now, why don’t we — what is this?”

Joker looks in bewilderment down at his own feet, which are now nestled in the soft, delicate tufts of deep hunter green that stick out like blades of grass from the new carpet. Bruce watches in silence as Joker tests it by skating his right foot over it, then his left, and finally crouches to repeat the test by pressing his open palms down against it. He lets out a thoughtful “hmmmmmmmmmm.” He looks up at Bruce.

“Your idea?”

Bruce nods, not daring to let himself hope again.

Joker’s eyebrows ride up almost all the way to his hairline. He cocks his head to the side, green curls raining all over his face. 

“You sneak in any more surprises while I was away?”

Bruce regroups, steels himself. He has a feeling he’s going to need all his faculties about him for this one. “As a matter of fact…”

Joker pushes himself back to his feet, clearly intrigued. Some of the focus sharpens in his eyes. Bruce rises from the couch and indicates the gym with his arm. 

“After you.”

The look Joker shoots him as he shuffles past on his way to the gym is one of deep suspicion, not unlike the ones Alfred gives him when Bruce tells him he has a plan. Amused despite himself, Bruce doesn’t immediately follow but rather gives Joker some time to take in what awaits him in the gym before he comes to join him there, not letting himself expect anything. 

“What,” Joker demands quietly, “is this?”

Bruce steps around him and stands by the squeeze machine. He touches one of the vivid purple-and-green rolling pins. “This is for you,” he tells Joker. 

“Obviously. What is it _for_?”

“Applying physical pressure. When you feel you need it, when you’re — agitated, or restless. Then you… You can lie here between the pins. You can adjust their height by turning these knobs here. Like this.” Bruce demonstrates, adjusting the upper pins to rise enough for a slim person to crawl underneath. “And then you can lower them as much as you need. Full body or just for specific areas, like your legs or chest. You choose.”

Joker’s eyes go wide, and this time, he manages to clear the fog of medication enough to pin Bruce in place with the storm of emotion crowding in his face. Bruce cannot tell if the emotion is good or bad, only that it’s _strong_ , and he tenses where he stands, his world tunneling to the worried twitch in Joker’s fingers.

Then Joker’s face changes again, and Bruce no longer has any difficulty putting a name to what he finds there. 

“How dare you,” the clown demands, his voice dropping barely above a whisper. 

Bruce’s hands itch for the sharp edges of a batarang. He doesn’t remember the last time he saw Joker this angry. “I’m _trying_ to help,” he reasons carefully. “We made a deal. Your doctor —”

Joker turns on his heel and stalks out of the gym. A moment later Bruce hears a thud, and then another, and another, and another, _bang, bang, bang_.

Well, _shit_. 

Bruce holds his breath and barrels after him into the parlor, expecting the worst. “Joker!”

And then the cry dies on his lips.

Joker stands by the windows, glistening with tension, facing the reluctant dawn. His fists fly at the glass time and time again. But it’s the sides of his fists that collide with the reinforced panes, not his knuckles, and though it looks painful he is in no danger of cutting himself open this way. The windows, unimpressed with the assault, take on the force of his blows, absorb it and throw it right back at him harmlessly in hollow bangs that shoot off into the room.

And this — this gives Bruce pause. 

Because there is a _purpose_ behind Joker’s strikes. They’re not erratic. They’re not the helpless flailing of a man losing control of his mind. Joker is clear-headed enough to hit in a way that won’t hurt him too much, and he is steady about it, almost methodical, and suddenly it reminds Bruce of nothing so much as his own training routines.

So he stands clear. He watches.

“Those windows won’t break,” he says after a moment. 

Joker pants, “I know.” Bang, bang, bang.

Bruce nods. “You’re not trying to break them.”

“No.” Bang, bang, bang, heavy breath stuttering out in huffs. 

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“If I don’t do that then I’m going to hit _you_ , my love, and —” bang, bang, bang, “I’d rather not —” bang, bang, “since it seems for now I’m —” bang, bang, bang, “in the clear.”

“In the clear?”

Joker lets out a feral growl and delivers one last hit with enough force to rattle the pane, and then he staggers back, sweat beading on his temple. He stands there bent low and panting, face hidden in dirty hair. 

“Since you brought me that contraption I’m assuming you’re not kicking me out,” he rasps out eventually. 

Ah. Bruce keeps his face clear, relaxing by a fraction. “No, I’m not,” he agrees.

“But I bit that guard.”

“Is that why you wanted to see me so badly? To make sure I wouldn’t kick you out for it?”

“Well.” Joker giggles breathlessly. “You did say that if I ever stepped out of line…”

“Not this time,” Bruce says. “Those were… unusual circumstances. But there _will_ be consequences.”

“Such as?”

Bruce’s jaw sets. 

“No music hour for a week. And… Neither I nor anyone else will visit you for three consecutive weeks.”

“Ha,” Joker breathes. “Ha! Ha… hahahahaha…” 

He seizes up, his knees hitting the floor, his arms coming around his torso, the laugh jerking out of him in coarse spurts and building, and building, and building. Before it can peak in a proper crescendo Joker’s abused voice breaks like a twig snapped in half under a boot. 

“Fine,” he croaks after a moment. “Maybe we need a break anyway. If you think… If you honestly think you can bring me something like _that_ and expect me to appreciate it when you’re… you’re…”

“You’re distraught,” Bruce says coldly. “You’re in no shape to talk. Get some rest. I’ll be back in three weeks, maybe you’ll feel better by then.”

“Hey Bats,” Joker calls before Bruce can reach the door.

He stops without turning around. “Yes?”

“I still got teeth.”

Bruce looks at him over his shoulder. “Yes, I noticed,” he deadpans. “So?”

“ _So_ , I want you to remember that. I still got teeth. The only reason I haven’t used them on you, or Brucie, is because I’m _choosing_ not to, every. Single. Time. I chose to bit that guard. I chose to kiss Brucie. I still got teeth, baby. Don’t ever think that I don’t.”

Bruce looks into his eyes. Joker holds his gaze. His eyes look clear and bright for the first time since he woke up.

Then Joker smiles, and Bruce turns away.

 

***

 

Lakeisha Jones is waiting for him by the door to Joker’s rooms, piece of paper in hand and a determined expression on her face.

“I quit,” she says.

Bruce stops dead in his tracks and she takes advantage of his surprise to shove the piece of paper at his chest. He catches it and skims the writing.

It’s a notice of termination.

He looks up at her and opens his mouth, but she cuts him right off, voice trembling.

“I just can’t do this anymore,” she says. “He threatened my _wife_. I have to pick up my wages and sell our apartment and move the hell out of this town before this maniac gets to either of us. And don’t you tell me he’s locked up! I’ve heard stories, Batman. I know he can have my entire family killed without lifting a finger.”

“This isn’t Arkham,” Bruce reminds her. “He can’t give anyone orders anymore.”

“Says you! I’m not going to stake my life and my future on that.” She takes a deep breath, pressing a hand to her chest. “Look, I’m not going to make this any more difficult for you and Wayne. I’m going to keep working until you find a replacement. Ben’s staying on, he’s a tough guy, he’s seen much worse at Arkham, but I…”

Bruce’s throat wants to close up, the enormity of Lakeisha’s distress churning in his gut. He forces out, “I understand.”

“I really don’t think you do, but then again, what does it matter? I already talked to Wayne’s butler. Just wanted to tell you in person.”

“Thank you, Mrs Jones.”

“And I know all about the non-disclosure agreements. Don’t worry, I won’t talk. I just want me and Layla to be safe.”

“You will be,” Bruce promises. “I guarantee it.”

Her eyes turn cold. “Thanks, Bats, but I think I’ve had enough of you for one lifetime. You’re half the reason I’d been wanting to quit for weeks now.”

“What?”

“It’s not right. Keeping us out of what you’re doing to him? It’s not right. I hate the Joker as much as anyone in Gotham but _you’re_ breaking all the rules you like without batting an eye, and the Commish is letting you, and honestly? I don’t want to be a part of any of that no more. Makes me sick.”

… And, just like that, Bruce feels tired. It settles over him like a puff of cigarette smoke someone’s blown in his face on the sidewalk. Suddenly it’s an effort to keep his shoulders from hunching and his head from dropping to his chin, and his eyes burn, and his cape feels much too heavy. He’s tired. With Joker, with the responsibility, with the anger and the need to justify his every move, and he just.

He just wants to sleep for a day.

But he still nods at Lakeisha and tells her, “I appreciate your service, Mrs Jones. I’m sure Wayne will see to it that you are properly compensated. I wish you luck.”

He slopes past her. She doesn’t try to stop him. Bruce makes his way to the master bedroom feeling the struggle of every single step in his bones. 

Alfred is waiting for him in the bedroom and accepts the costume once Bruce sheds it, and as he undresses, Bruce tells him, “Remind me to get in touch with the company later today. I want to transfer Lakeisha’s wife to the Metropolis division, with full compliments. A nice apartment. Secured internship and employment once she finishes school. We’ll ensure a job for Lakeisha with the MPD or anywhere else she chooses to apply.”

Alfred nods, his face inscrutable. “Very good, sir. Anything else?”

“Is Dick still here?” 

“Yes, though he did say he wishes to pay a visit to Miss Gordon in the afternoon.” 

“Fine. Wake me up after three.”

“Of course.”

Alfred leaves him alone after that with no further quips or jabs, instead wearing his Worried expression on the way out. As soon as the door falls shut behind him Bruce drags himself over to the bed and collapses there in his underwear, not even bothering to crawl under the covers.

He closes his eyes…

… And opens them again half an hour later, his eyelids stingy with sand but his mind still much too loud. Even with the curtains closed and exhaustion weighing him into the mattress he lies there restless, his eyes open much as his mind is, caught in a maelstrom that somehow spills through to his stomach and squeezes there time and time again.

This makes him think of Joker’s sleeping pills and he remembers, _Maybe you should take one._ He presses a hand to his forehead, then rubs it down his face. 

…Maybe he should.

 

***

 

Still, he must have fallen into a fitful daze at one point or another, because some unspecified time later he wakes up to find a note waiting for him on the bedside table. 

It’s in Dr. Mulligan’s careful hand and reads,

_I need Batman to come see me in my office as soon as possible. Tonight, if at all convenient._

Bruce stares at the note for a minute before he breathes out loudly through his nose, closes his grainy eyes one last time, and pushes himself up. He rings for Alfred. 

It’s time to eat, and then…

He has things to do.

 

***

 

Dick and Jason go on ahead without him that night to keep the city in check as Bruce knifes through the thick, jagged-shadowed fog buttered just above the cracky tarmac that weaves through the woods to Arkham.

He’s still tired, the exhaustion by now settled comfortably in his bones, but that doesn’t matter. The caffeine cruising in his system helps him fend off the weight on his eyelids and even more than that, the urgency of Dr. Mulligan’s message keeps his mind on high alert. He listens to police reports and the boys checking in with him every few minutes, and hopes dearly nothing big hits the city while he’s away.

The sight of the Asylum creeping out from the fog does even more to clear his mind. Bruce’s muscles start tensing when he first spies the tips of its towers like lance-points aimed at the sky, and the pressure in his gut only abates a little when he reminds himself that Joker isn’t there anymore. The clown, though probably the worst horror in there, was only one in a place of many, and most of the others still dwell inside, locked away from the world until they can claw their way out again…

… Or so it feels like when Bruce braves the imposing iron gates and makes his way up the drive to the main doors. He looks up. He’s never felt dwarfed by Gotham, with its forest of glass and steel and stone, as at home with its gargoyles and cathedrals as he is on top of corporate skyscrapers, just another shadow to keep the others company. Arkham, though… Arkham is not _his_. It doesn’t _belong_ to him the way Gotham does. It belongs to…

Well, it belongs to Joker, as much as it can belong to anyone. Still does even though Arkham’s darling star is no longer there to feed laughter down her corridors. Bruce feels it in the cold stone walls as he passes, smells it in the air which hangs stale and pregnant with chemicals, senses it in the way this place seems to push against him and yet reach out for him all at once with impatient, grimy little fingers, _One of us, one of us, one of us._

He pauses before the cells and takes a deep breath. 

Stop this, he tells himself firmly. Just — stop. There is nothing supernatural about this place, its very human tragedies and the unfortunate souls locked up in here. He knows that better than anyone, in the same vein he knows that there is nothing supernatural about _him_. 

But Gotham loves her myths and embraces them with a passion that borders on desperation, and Arkham lies at her center, and for better or worse, the Batman is one of those myths now as much as Joker, as much as the asylum itself, have become. There is no escaping that now. And within the old Gothic walls, it’s all too easy to surrender yourself to such — flights of fancy, and let the mythology of this place leech into your skin, far too deep for reason to reach. 

Especially with as little sleep as he’s had. Bruce clenches his entire body to bring himself back to reality and grits his teeth hard for good measure, then sweeps past the dim corridors without lingering to peer into the cells, ignoring the fact that the insistent whispers of _One of us, one of us_ still seem to follow him just on the edge of hearing. 

Dr. Mulligan is already waiting for him in her office, peering into her computer with the single-minded focus Bruce recognizes all too well. She smiles when she sees him enter through the door, and the air of brusque practicality around her helps Bruce get his act together. When he closes the door, it seems that he’s shutting away all that is inexplicable about Arkham and entering a comfortingly _human_ space where no nonsense is permitted, and it feels like coming up for air after fighting your way out of a river current. 

“Not the window this time?” the doctor says with a touch of humor. “How considerate. I’m going to take that to mean you’re warming up to me.”

“Why did you want to see me, Doctor?”

“Because of this.” Dr. Mulligan uses a key to open a locked drawer in her desk and retrieves three unremarkable black memory sticks, which she pushes to Bruce across the desk. “You said you wanted to investigate Arkham,” she says, “and I said I’d help. This is me keeping my word.”

Bruce stands by the desk and picks up one of the memory sticks. It’s smaller than his thumb, looking painfully fragile and breakable against the kevlar glove. The one he is holding is blank, but the other two are marked by thin strips of band-aid, one inscribed with ‘rogues’ and the other bearing a simple ‘J.’ 

“What’s on them?” he asks.

“Records from our digital archives. Everything I had the clearance to access that I thought might be useful. We’re currently in the process of transferring our paper files to digital so I took advantage of that to get my hands on older documents too. There’s video recordings and sound clips and… well, you’ll see for yourself.”

Bruce nods. He secretes the pendrive into his belt and does the same with the other two. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“You did not get those from me. If the leak gets out I’ll not just lose _this_ job but forfeit all my career prospects in the field of psychiatry altogether, I hope you understand that.”

“No need to worry. I know how to handle secrets.”

Dr. Mulligan keeps her face expertly blank as she adjusts her glasses. “Of course you do. Anyhoo,” she picks up, “I put in files on all sorts of patients — only things you need to see, of course, I do have _some_ professional integrity left — but you _will_ find mostly Joker-related recordings on the third one. Since they’re of… special interest to you right now.”

There’s a jab hidden in there somewhere, but Bruce doesn’t care to try and parse it right now. He simply nods.

“I appreciate it.”

“How incriminating those materials turn out to be, it’s up to you and the Commisioner to decide, but I do trust you will contact Arkham’s board of directors or, even better, the APA’s Ethics Committee to reach a verdict. I’d have done so myself years ago if not for — well, if not for the fact that I’d rather work to fix the system from the inside than rock the boat and not get to work at all. Besides, they’re not _all_ morons here. The truly incriminating materials have all been either deleted or buried so deep in the system that us do-gooders can’t access them. For that, you will need more expert hacking skills than mine, and I regret to say I can’t just give you a copy of my security badge for clearance, for obvious reasons.”

“Understandable.”

“In any case, you will find names there and that’s always a good place to start. People that actually could use some of that intimidation you inflicted on poor Harleen. Her name is not in here, by the way, but don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on her like I promised.”

“That is a lot to go on,” Bruce says quietly. “You took a big risk.”

“Yes, like I said, I’m aware, so you’d better work hard to make sure it pays off. Let me know if you need any further help once you start chasing leads.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Bruce touches the cache with the pendrives, then after a moment’s hesitation asks, “Doctor, can we talk about what happened with the Joker yesterday?”

She sighs, sitting back in her chair. “I figured you’d ask that,” she says. “You watched the whole thing, of course?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“Will you schedule an extra session with him to talk through the incident?”

“An extra session? No.” Dr. Mulligan taps her fingers against the desk, long fingernails making a series of rapid little clicks. “Our video meetings are every Tuesday and Friday. It’s Saturday.”

Bruce frowns. “But —”

“Batman, I am already subjected to more Joker than any sane person should reasonably need or want in one lifetime. I really do not need any more. What happened was nothing out of the ordinary, no matter what you might imagine. In fact, he still exhibited what for him passed for remarkable restraint. If I scheduled an extra session because of an isolated violent incident I would be feeding into his ego and implying that he is special enough to warrant more focus and attention from me than my other patients, which is simply not the case. My schedule is filled to bursting — here, take a gander if you don’t believe me.” She taps a planner hidden behind the stacks of folders on her desk, and Bruce shakes his head. 

“I’ll take your word for it.” He pauses, considering, and then decides to press his point anyway. “The thing is, Doctor, I fear extra sessions might be necessary, at least for a month.”

Doctor Mulligan skewers him with a look so pointed Joker himself would be proud. Her fingers knit together as she demands, “What did you do.”

“I had to punish him for what he did to Carter.”

“What. Did you _do_?”

Bruce takes a fortifying breath to weather out the storm. “I told him he won’t get any visits for three weeks.”

Doctor Mulligan doesn’t react all at once. She lets Bruce stew, her eyes like twin knife-points driving hard as though they could siege their way past the cowl and through the soft flesh of his eyeballs all the way to his brain. 

“Not even from Bruce Wayne? Not even from the Arkham barber?” she asks quietly.

“No.”

“I see.” She sighs, closes her eyes and massages them hard as she slumps in her chair. For a moment the formidable doctor persona chips off her like bits of armor, revealing underneath a little old lady who is as tired and overwhelmed with her life as Bruce feels. “Let me get this straight,” she murmurs into her hands. “You’ve essentially taken it upon yourself to sentence the Joker to a month of solitary confinement.”

Bruce’s first instinct is to protest. But Dr. Mulligan’s eyes are cold, and defeated, and he knows she won’t take kindly to excuses. He considers her words and realizes that he can only say, “Yes.”

“Splendid. Well done. And I suppose you expect that seeing my face on a video screen every other day or so will be sufficient to alleviate the symptoms your decision _will_ , without a doubt, trigger?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce admits, his chin dropping. “But he might… need the extra attention.”

“I’ll…” She sighs again, pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’ll see what I can do. Anything else I should know?”

“He…” Bruce swallows. “He didn’t take kindly to the hug machine.”

“Indeed? And did you find that surprising?”

Bruce can feel the vein above his brow pulsing. He says, “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Fine. Now, if that’s all —”

“Do you think we could ever let him go outside again?” Bruce asks before he can talk himself out of it. “Maybe we could amend the procedure?”

Doctor Mulligan graciously gives the question some thought before replying, “Yes, and yes. In time, _if_ we can get the Commissioner to agree. I’ll work out an amended plan and let you know.” 

“All right.” 

“Keep me posted on your progress, will you?”

“If I can. I’d rather keep you out of it so no one can suspect your involvement.”

“It might get ugly,” she warns him, her voice dropping. “There’s… rumors. And open secrets. Things I’ve been trying to do something about, but… Just… be ready to learn things you’ll probably wish you didn’t.”

Bruce can feel the steel coming over his heart in a cold, familiar grip. His hand stays firm and protective over the cache with the pendrives.

“I never regret knowledge,” he says quietly. “Not if it helps me to get those things to stop.”

Dr. Mulligan studies his face for a minute before she nods, perhaps in understanding, perhaps in acceptance. Bruce swoops out of her office the same way he came in — through the door, and into the impatient arms of the asylum eager to keep him inside.

And maybe it’s his imagination — most likely is — but without Joker here, Arkham feels different. He’s noticed that before, but it jumps at him now how _hungry_ the whispers appear, how desperate, as though they want to hold him hostage in exchange for the whirlpool of madness they’d lost. The silence hangs a touch too heavy without Joker’s laughter feeding into it. The air charges with expectation, directionless, lost. 

Or maybe that’s just because Joker has meant Arkham and Arkham has meant Joker in Bruce’s head for so many years now that it’s difficult to conceive of one without the other.

He wonders if Joker’s consciousness will eventually sink into the walls of his own home and warp them into its likeness like it did here. He shudders and walks faster, pushing through the air that tries to sink into him and pull and pull and pull, _One of us, one of us, one of us_.

 _I’m not,_ Bruce tells the cold stone walls. _You can’t have me anymore than you can have him._

The Asylum seems to hiss at him, and Bruce can’t shake off its whispers even as he all but runs to the car.

 

***

 

He makes himself wait with reviewing the files until after his patrol is finished. Jason goes straight to bed but Dick elects to stay behind in the cave and sit beside Bruce when he activates the first memory stick and starts parsing through the files, starting with the employee records.

“Those are the crooked ones, then?” Dick asks as Bruce goes through page after page of personal information about mostly guards, but also some doctors and board members. 

“Presumably. Or at least those turning a blind eye.” Bruce copies the whole folder and marks it with a reference number before moving on to the patient files, starting with one called “1809.TWO_FACE”.

In the folder he finds, besides video and sound files, copies of incident reports. Most of them appear to be in the same vein: inmate 1809 tripped on the stairs. Inmate 1809 incited a scuffle. Inmate 1809 provoked the guards. Inmate 1809 engaged in a verbal altercation with another inmate and needed to be subdued. Then a litany of consequences: lacerations, bruises, broken bones, sedatives, extended shock therapies, withdrawal of privileges, solitary confinement.

“Whoa,” Dick whispers by Bruce’s side. “They sure as hell aren’t holding back.”

“It appears so,” Bruce agrees darkly. 

“Still, you know… it’s _them_. The freaks. They have to be strict just to keep the place going from day to day.”

Bruce doesn’t answer. He plays one of the video clips.

It’s a feed from a surveillance camera in Harvey’s cell, showing him on his bunk, reading the Gotham Gazette. A guard Bruce recognizes from the personnel files comes up to stand by the glass. He bangs his truncheon against it — three times. 

“Yo Dent,” he calls, “that bother you?” He gives the glass three bangs again. “No? How ‘bout now?” It’s nine this time, at irregular intervals. “Still no? How about —”

Harvey snaps his book shut and gets off the bunk. He comes up to the glass and stands proud and tall, looking down his considerable height at the guard like he’s a dead toad smeared on the side of the road. 

“Go. Away,” he orders.

“Shit you’re one ugly motherfucker,” the guard tells him. He turns to the side and calls out to someone, “Ain’t he, Bobby?”

Beside him stands another guard, chuckling, glancing up at Harvey with the sort of ugly, vengeful self-satisfaction little men like him like to bask in when bigger, stronger, scarier people are suddenly brought lower than themselves. “That he is, John, that he is,” he nods, narrowing his eyes as he smirks at the prisoner. “What does it remind you of? Because I can’t decide if it looks more like burnt pizza that got run over by a truck or maybe, like, if someone spat out a fuckton of chewing gum.”

“Hello?” Harvey addresses the camera, putting on a mildly exasperated front which is belied by the vein beginning to throb in his forehead. “Is no one going to do anything about this?”

“Awwww, what’s ‘a matter, lawyer guy? We not hoity-toity enough fer ya?”

Harvey sighs. “And what, precisely, is your problem with me, gentlemen?”

“Didya hear that, Johnny? He called us gentlemen!”

The first guard grins and bangs his truncheon three times against the glass right in front of Harvey’s face. Both men laugh. Harvey waits for them to stop, and then he says, quietly, “You will go away now or I will make sure there won’t be enough left of _your_ faces for your poor mothers to identify at the morgue.”

“Ooh, now you done and stepped in it, big guy,” the first guard croons in triumph. “He just threaten us, Bobby!”

“He did, too,” Bobby agrees. “Which means we get to do this.”

He swipes his key-card into the slot. The cell dings and opens. Harvey turns to the camera. “Can I get some real guards in here?” he calls as the two men step in, cattle prods charged and ready. “Hello?!”

“Tough break, Pizza Guy,” the guard called Johnny gloats. “It’s just us down this block tonight.” He swings, and the recording breaks just as Harvey puts his arm up over his face.

The next shot is of the cell half an hour later, empty. The door is open. No one stirs out on the corridor. 

Bruce watches until the frame goes dark, and only when Dick clears his throat does he realize he’s been sitting there staring at a dark screen for the better part of the minute. 

He tries to move, and feels rigid. His arm barely unclenches enough for him to click on another recording. Beside him Dick is quiet, and holds his breath as they watch another ugly scene, in the cafeteria this time, two different guards trying to goad Harvey into a reaction and then clubbing him to submission when he snaps and punches one of them in the face. Another shows Harvey being escorted somewhere and the guards freely insulting him as a doctor, a man Bruce doesn’t recognize, follows them and does absolutely nothing. Yet another shows a nurse coming up to Harvey’s cell and offering him a coin, then laughing when Harvey lunges and doesn’t manage to catch it. The other recordings are much the same: petty verbal and physical abuse, negligence, humiliation, and perhaps worst of all, obvious cuts suggesting even more heinous ugliness removed from the main surveillance. 

“What the hell,” Dick breathes quietly in his chair. “ _What_ the _hell_.”

Bruce doesn’t have any voice in him. He clicks out of Harvey’s folder and selects Nigma’s. His fingers don’t shake only because his anger has rocketed past that.

Riddler seems to be better than Harvey at keeping his temper — no surprise there — but his way of dealing with the abuse is to assert his superiority over everyone else, which doesn’t sit well with the Arkham crowd at all. Bruce makes himself sit through several recordings of the staff reacting badly to Riddler’s scathing insults, then clicks out of the folder and goes through the others.

He doesn’t go through everything. He can’t. Each new video is like another drop of water eroding what little hope and faith he had left. His only comfort is that obviously any attempts at sexually harassing Ivy failed miserably, but the Asylum is home to scores of other female inmates who can’t rely on poisonous skin and deathly pheromones for protection. Though the tapes don’t contain rape attempts as such there’s more than enough violence and abuse to fill in what the recordings leave out.

Bruce does. He connects the dots, fills in the gaps, draws the inevitable conclusions. 

And God, he is _angry_.

“It’s not your fault,” Dick says quietly as they go over the files on the regular, non-celebrity patients. “I know you’re thinking that but it’s not.”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Bruce lies. 

“Yeah, and I wasn’t checking out Starfire’s butt the other day. I know you. I can hear you guilt-tripping yourself from here.”

Bruce closes his eyes and presses a hand to his face. He breathes out.

“I should have looked into Arkham sooner,” he whispers, and his throat feels like sandpaper. “I should have paid attention.”

“Look, _no_. I mean sure, there were rumors, but there’s always rumors, and I mean, you couldn’t know —”

“I should have,” Bruce insists. “It’s my responsibility.”

“Bruce —”

“I _put_ them there. And then I just — left. And then when they broke out I brought them there again without a second thought, because I didn’t _want_ to think, because it would have made it all more… complicated.”

“Fine, maybe, if that’s how you want to go about it. The thing is though, you didn’t have a choice. They can’t go to Blackgate and there’s nowhere else —”

“I should have made sure they had proper care. I should have done more. I should have reviewed the employee files, looked into the patients, investigated —”

“This is Gotham,” Dick insists, voice rising. “Weeding out the corruption here is like trying to chop off hydra heads. And it’s not like in that Disney movie where you can just slice your way out from the inside, like a…”

Bruce’s head snaps up. The wheels turn. He looks at Dick.

Dick opens his eyes wide and cocks his head at him. “What? What did I say?”

Bruce doesn’t say anything. He looks back to the screens, his mouth tightening just as the beginnings of a plan coalesce in his mind. 

“Oh no,” Dick says. “No, no, no. Please tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“Go to bed,” Bruce tells him. “We’ll come back to this tomorrow.”

He stands up, but Dick doesn’t. He looks at the last pendrive and picks it up, finger tracing over the little ‘J.’. 

“Aren’t you going to go over this one?” he asks.

Bruce looks at the pendrive, and for a second the ‘J.’ seems to grow until it fills his entire world. 

“No,” he says quietly. “Not tonight.”

Dick studies his face before nodding and putting the pendrive down. His face goes blank. “Okay. Let’s go get some shuteye,” he agrees, and doesn’t try to smile.

They trudge up the stairs without exchanging any more words, and part in silence with the sun already halfway up the sky. And once again, Bruce can’t sleep. The recordings play out before his eyes one by one, and he thinks about the cuts and what else there is for him to see, and he thinks about the ‘J.’ pendrive, and aches.

 

***

 

He is summoned to the company for a monthly review the next day, and feels like a sleepwalker as he dutifully goes through the motions: smiling, shaking hands, nodding approval, signing where appropriate. He makes himself pay attention as his employees give presentations and expect feedback. He thinks he does a decent job when at the end of the day no one asks him what’s wrong or expresses concern over him not being quite there, but Arkham refuses to leave his mind even for a moment, and sits like a lump of coal in the pit of his stomach as he makes his way back home.

Dick is waiting for him in the study. So is Jason. They both have their arms crossed over their chests and are looking at him sternly, and the lump of coal only grows as Bruce tries and fails to read their faces.

Then Dick says, “So, I went over the Joker pendrive with Jason when you were away.”

Bruce opens his mouth. He closes it. 

“I see,” he whispers.

“I don’t get how that makes what he did any less horrible but Grayson here needed a Kleenex,” Jason informs Bruce with a chin pointed haughtily at the ceiling. 

“I did not need a Kleenex,” Dick corrects with a roll of his eyes. “Still, it was… Well. You should see for yourself.”

“I will. Now, what’s this all about?” 

“I know what you’re planning to do, Bruce.”

The lump of coal turns to ice. “How can you —”

“You’re going to go undercover to work as a guard at Arkham, aren’t you.”

Bruce stares at him for a long, long time. “It did cross my mind,” he admits reluctantly.

“Is it because of what I said? The _Hercules_ references, taking the beast out from the inside? That was just a figure of speech!”

Bruce can feel his walls going up, and it’s a struggle to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. “I have to,” he tells both of them, looking at Dick and Jason in turns. “I need to see what it’s really like on the inside from day to day. It needs to be done.”

“Maybe,” Dick agrees, “but not by you.”

“What?”

“I’ll do it.”

The flood of horror crashes over Bruce instantly, closing over his head, dragging him under, clogging his throat. “No,” he growls, and his voice trembles on its way out. “That won’t happen.”

“Bruce…”

“That place is _dangerous_. I won’t let you do this for me.”

Something hardens in Dick’s face that halts the words in Bruce’s mouth. “I’m not doing this for _you_ ,” Dick says. “I’m doing this for the patients. I’ve seen the tapes too, Bruce. It’s just plain common sense. You can’t be working there undercover and operating as Batman at the same time, and you need to do that to interrogate the guards and so on. Besides, they all know you. I know you’re good at disguises but you can’t change your entire face. The crooks will recognize their pal Matches Malone and if not, they sure as hell will recognize Bruce Wayne.”

“Grayson has a point,” Jason pipes in. “His ugly mug isn’t nearly as notorious as yours.”

“That’s a funny way to pronounce dazzling good looks,” Dick shoots at him over a smirk before turning to Bruce again. “Look, I’m doing this whether you like it or not. I went undercover with you hundreds of times before and besides, it’ll be good training before the Police Academy. And let’s face it, Casanova, you’re gonna be needed here.” He points up, indicating the third floor with a meaningful tilt to his eyebrows. 

Bruce looks away. “I told him I won’t visit him for three weeks.”

“Yeah, and no way you’re gonna wrap this thing up in a month. He’s gonna raise hell if three weeks pass and you’re still not there to see him.”

“He has no way of telling time.”

“Yeah, no,” Jason says. “He started a countdown. He marked a line on the wall of the bedroom this morning and I bet your ass he’s gonna keep count of the days until you come back.”

And Bruce has no idea what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything. He turns to Dick. 

“It’s too dangerous,” he insists.

“You didn’t think so when you thought you’d be the one going undercover.”

“That’s because I wasn’t going to risk anyone but myself.”

“I’m doing this, okay? You can’t. They need you out there on the streets. I can do a better job of it anyway and the bottom line is, you can’t tell me what to do anymore.” 

And of course that hurts. It hurts like the punches and cuts and kicks never do, and Bruce suspects it will keep hurting for as long as he lives because he’s been _trying_ to stop seeing Dick as that child he brought home from the circus but he can’t quite manage that even now. That’s not fair to Dick, he knows, and he hasn’t exactly been an exemplary father. But he can’t help but want to keep trying. 

Even though, deep down, he knows it’s much too late.

 _One of us, one of us, one of us_ , the whispers echo in his head, and he shudders. He’d been dreading the prospect of entering Arkham not just for a short visit but regularly, for hours at a time, but the thought of _Dick_ going down that rabbit hole is so much worse. He tries to imagine his son patrolling the grim cold corridors and dealing with the likes of Ivy and Riddler and Harvey every single day, and he feels sick, and the urge to stride up to Dick and hug him tight until he can talk him out of it sparks up so violent and volatile that Bruce is momentarily terrified. 

He must have let some of that fear show in his face despite his best efforts, because Dick’s eyes soften after a few moments and he takes a step forward. His arm rises like he’s considering putting it on Bruce’s shoulder before he aborts the movement and lets it drop by his side, fingers curling. He sighs.

“I’ll be careful,” he promises. “I won’t go looking for trouble and I’ll keep my head down. I’ll try to stay away from the really bad guys, won’t volunteer to feed Killer Croc and all that, okay? And if there’s a riot I won’t try to save everyone on my own and call you as soon as it starts looking like something bad’s gonna happen. Pinkie bat-promise.”

He tries on a smile, which only succeeds in reminding Bruce how that smile used to look like when Dick was nine. He aches down to his bones, and the ache is made so much worse by the fact that he really can’t do anything to stop his child anymore. 

Like it or not, Dick is a man now. And at the end of the day, Bruce has to learn to at least try and accept it…

But damn if he won’t do everything in his power to make sure his son is safe.

“We’ll train for a week,” he tells Dick sternly. “I won’t okay this until you successfully convince me you can keep your disguise going for extended periods of time. You will have a communicator with you at all times and a customized utility belt to go with your uniform. You will follow strict protocol and not stray from my instructions and you will pull away as soon as we get the evidence we need.”

Dick lets out a deep breath, and his smile settles into something much more tangible. “All right,” he agrees. “That’s… reasonable. I guess. For you.”

Bruce nods, already regretting every single word that left his mouth. He can practically feel himself going gray, and the urge to hug Dick and keep him close still hasn’t abated. 

Dear God, good luck falling asleep _now_ …

“You two and your damn bleeding hearts,” Jason comments under his breath, looking disgusted with the proceedings. “These guys are fucking criminals. They deserve everything coming their way.”

“We talked about this,” Dick turns to him, lifting an eyebrow. “Extensively. It’s half an hour of my life I’ll never get back so let’s not retread old ground here, yeah? I’m doing this.”

Jason mouths something that sounds suspiciously like ‘hero complex’ and Bruce is too tired and overwhelmed to call him out on the hypocrisy. He isn’t sure he can deal with this conversation going on any longer, so he makes his excuses and heads straight to the cave, where he struggles with himself for five minutes before pulling up the live Joker surveillance.

He watches Joker as the clown busies himself with some writing, and fights against the urge to zoom in and read the scribbles over his shoulder. The ‘J.’ pendrive sits on the keyboard by his elbow but Bruce can’t bring himself to pick it up. Not yet. He knows he’s being a coward about this, but he is too worried already, and this…

This will just have to wait.

He rests his head in the palms of his hands and watches Joker, and as he does, he lets his mind churn over the recordings and files he saw last night to come up with an itinerary. He’ll visit the injured and retired guards first and see what confessions he can get out of them, and then he and Dick will decide whether he should pursue the current employees immediately or wait until Dick gets settled in so as not to spook the suspects prematurely, and then…

He jolts awake sometime later with Alfred shaking his shoulder and his hands going numb from the weight of his head resting on top of them. His mouth tastes sour and his throat is dry, and his stomach rolls at the smell of roast Alfred brought down to the cave. 

“What time is it?” he asks groggily, his eyes sticky and his back aching from the uncomfortable position. 

“Almost eight pm, Sir.” Alfred coughs politely, nudging the plate with the roast closer to Bruce. “You still have some time to move to an actual bed.”

Bruce blinks and rubs his eyes. “No. I have to…” He looks up, and realizes that he has fallen asleep with the Joker feed still playing on the screens. The clown is no longer sitting by the desk but jumping on his trampoline in the gym, his back ostensibly turned on the hug machine. 

Bruce watches him until Alfred clears his throat and pushes the roast unceremoniously right under Bruce’s nose.

“Right.” Bruce nods at him and picks up the knife and fork. “Okay, okay, I’ll eat. You don’t have to stand over me.”

“That remains to be seen,” Alfred murmurs skeptically. “The young masters have expressed a desire to know what you’ve planned for the night, Sir.”

Bruce nods again as he carves out a piece of the roast for himself and puts it in his mouth. It’s rich, juicy and delicious as always, and he can’t seem to bring himself to appreciate the taste anyway. 

“Bring them down here,” he tells Alfred. “I’ll brief them as I eat.”

When Alfred leaves, Bruce watches Joker jump for a few more minutes before he exits the feed and brings up the police patrol reports instead. By the time the boys arrive he is almost in the Batman headspace, or close enough that he feels confident in his words when he explains the plan to them. The sour taste of the unplanned nap still lingers in his mouth and muddies his vision, bringing on the first tingles of what will no doubt bleed into a full-blown headache, but neither Jason nor Dick make any comments about his state and that has to be good enough. 

They go out that night expecting answers, but come back sorely disappointed. None of the ex-guards want to talk. They aren’t as afraid of the Batman as everyone else, probably because they’d had proof time and time again that he doesn’t kill, not even scum like Joker, and some of them even try to sass him before he threatens to put them in the hospital if they don’t cooperate. It doesn’t work. Even intimidated the people he interrogates seem determined to protect their former colleagues, though Bruce can tell they have no love to spare for Arkham itself.

“It just doesn’t make any _sense_ ,” Jason complains on the drive back to the cave. “Why would they go out of their way to protect the place if they hate it so much? I don’t get it.”

“It may be an us vs. them thing,” Bruce muses aloud. “Like a dysfunctional family. Or maybe they’re too scared.”

“You think there’s someone big and important behind this whole thing?”

“There usually is when money’s involved,” Bruce agrees. “But that’s not the whole picture. I think it’s also a matter of principle. They may not see the abuse as wrong if it happens to…”

“Criminals?”

“Yes.”

“Well, in that case yeah, they’ve got a point,” Jason says stubbornly, as if daring Bruce to argue. 

“Not now,” Bruce admonishes him. “I’m thinking.”

Jason laps into a sulk, and maintains it all the way to the cave where they meet up with Dick, already dismounting his motorcycle. 

“I guess there’s nothing for it,” Dick observes as they gather by the computers. “Looks like operation Secret Superspy Dick Grayson is officially go.”

“Want me to play the Mission Impossible theme for you?” Jason grouses, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“No need, Robin,” Dick tells him magnanimously. “There was more than enough epicness in that sentence already.”

“Do you think this is a joke?” Bruce asks sharply, and Dick’s face falls.

“Of course not,” he says. “But seeing how it’s obvious we’re gonna have to go ahead with it anyway I decided that a little humor might make the prospect more palatable.”

“Not for me.”

“You’re not the only one here, Bruce.”

“Right, so, this is super awkward,” Jason comments after a moment of icy silence. “That’s my cue to vamoose. See ya tomorrow, punks.”

“Be ready with a disguise,” Bruce orders Dick. “We begin training as soon as you get some rest.”

Dick sketches him a sarcastic salute before he follows Jason up the stairs. For a brief moment Bruce contemplates joining them, but he knows that even with the throbbing headache he won’t be able to fall asleep now. 

He eyes the ‘J.’ pendrive.

… Might as well get it over with.

His stomach pinches tight as he sits down and activates the pendrive, and it only gets worse when he goes through recording after recording, file after file, telling a story as cruel and perverted as those of the other inmates. There’s beatings, insults, ‘pranks.’ There’s more of what he saw in the other files. But…

But unlike the other inmates, Joker invites the abuse. He acts like he _wants_ the guards to beat and kick him, to pull his hair, to starve and isolate him, treat him like garbage, something less than human. And the thing is, Bruce should have expected that, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch the scenes play out, like…

… like Joker biting Carter in the garden. A bid for control, a point to be made, an illusion of choice.

_I still got teeth._

_You can’t do anything to me I don’t want you to._

Bruce wonders if Joker really believes that, and the thought is… 

Sad.

Another thing about the Joker files is the guards don’t bother to censor them as much as they censored the other recordings. There’s still obvious cuts and missing footage, but what Bruce sees here is far more brutal and _petty_ than what got into the other files, which — his throat seizes up — means that the guards thought it was okay. That there would be no consequences.

That no one would care.

And the worst thing is, everything points to them being right.

Bruce spends the rest of the pale morning hours going through every single file in Joker’s archive. He didn’t intend to, but once he started he found it impossible to stop. He doesn’t know what’s worse — the beatings? The pranks, like leaving the door to Joker’s cell open just so the clown would wander out into the waiting arms of the guards ready to punish him? The few therapy sessions he saw, including the “bad reality TV” therapy Dr. Quinzel mentioned and others, just as incompetent and even more egregious, full of gaslighting and humiliation and power struggles? Or the electroshocks, which in Joker’s case seemed to have been administered pretty much at whim, with no regard to the patient’s well-being or endurance but just as a means for revenge or just plain shutting him up? Or maybe the cold uncertainty of the cuts, the unspoken in-betweens, which invite Bruce’s mind to supply his own parade of horrors? 

Bruce doesn’t know. He makes himself watch scene after scene of Joker strapped to a table, convulsing and writhing helplessly as electricity surges through his body, and lets the images feed into the maw of the dark, angry beast stirring deep inside him.

 _They will pay_ , he promises the pathetic pale figure on the screen. _I give you my word._

 _They will_ pay.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God, I'm exhausted. But excited! But exhausted. Lots of important moments happening in this chapter, some of them I was impatient to get to ever since I started writing, and I'm REALLY interested to hear what you think of it so please let me know!
> 
> In other HWA news, do check out those [MAGNIFICENT cover designs](http://ladyredlipclassic.tumblr.com/post/147360360928/so-few-anons-in-the-ask-box-were-asking-for-some) for the fic done by the lovely [lady redlipclassic](http://ladyredlipclassic.tumblr.com) on tumblr! They're so gorgeous I don't know what to do with myself. Thank you!
> 
> And as always many many thanks to Mitzvah for the brainstorming and ideas. You're irreplaceable <3
> 
> Do keep in mind that the rating did go up to "Explicit" with this chapter for some pretty heavy sexual content at the end. And that sexual harrassment part of the Arkham investigation? Well, we'll be diving into that pretty heavily from now on so if you find this sort of content upsetting you may want to give this chapter a pass. 
> 
> Other than that, enjoy!

A week later, Bruce watches from a safe distance as his son — hair dyed a dusty blond, stubble on his chin, Arkham guard uniform looking painfully flimsy as it covers the protective kevlar vest underneath — flashes his brand new badge at the first security posts and gets swallowed up by the monstrous architecture of the one place in Gotham Bruce genuinely hates.

“You all right?” Jason asks quietly as they watch Dick disappear into the darkness beyond the unforgiving walls. 

“Yes,” Bruce assures him quietly, even as his fingers clam up from the effort of not shaking. _This is a mistake. This is wrong. I need to stop it. I need —_

“Grayson’s gonna be fine,” Jason whispers, turning to look out the window at the Asylum. “You’ve set him up with every possible precaution imaginable and then some. He’s literally carrying a mini armory in his pockets.”

The very last words come out pointed, sharp little lance-points coated in resentment. Bruce looks over to him, with some effort.

“Do you feel that your own equipment is lacking?” he asks after a moment.

“Who’s saying that? I’m not saying that. And I’m sure as hell not saying that you’ve spent more time and nerves getting Dick ready to wave a truncheon around and change chamberpots than you did preparing _me_ to fight mobsters on the streets every night.”

… Oh. Bruce narrows his eyes, studying the tense, defensive posture of the boy now angled away from him, and paying fresh attention to the pinched lines of his face, the tight fit of the mask hiding his eyes. Some of the panic releases, and is replaced with a quieter ache, the kind of helplessness that he’s all too familiar with these days. 

“I’ve trained you,” he tries, knowing the words are all wrong even as he lets them out. “And if you have ideas as to how we can improve your arsenal, why don’t you —”

“That is _so_ not the point, Bruce, oh my God!” Jason kicks the floor of the car. “And don’t you fucking dare try to dad me now,” he snaps when Bruce opens his mouth. “Save us both the embarrassment.”

“Jason —”

“Uh, B.? Hello? I’m in,” Dick’s voice cracks over the sudden static from the com link. “My very first night shift at the loony bin, hooray! Imagine a confetti pop somewhere in here.” 

Jason glares at the radio and very pointedly not at Bruce. Bruce sighs and turns up the volume, heart thumping. “Did anyone suspect anything?” he asks.

“Nope, practically breezed through security. They did frisk me on the way in but the rulebook says that’s standard procedure. The guy doing it cracked some lame lines about breaking me in and mentioned something about a hazing, and already one inmate tried to flirt with me. Will be making my first rounds with a guy called Swanson in a bit just as soon as he’s done with his coffee.”

“Good. Keep your eyes open and see if you can find a way to hack into their surveillance.”

“Yes, o captain, my captain. Should anything happen, I want you both to know you’re in my will and —”

“Dick.”

“Hey, rude. I’m charming college dropout Chris Basco, don’t you remember?”

“Stop being cute and go do your damn job, Grayson,” Jason mutters, which gets him a chuckle.

“I actually do gotta go,” Dick says. “Will report back in a bit when I’m on my break. Kisses!”

“Don’t you mean, Over?” Jason grouses but the link is already dead. Jason sighs and slumps in the passenger seat. “He thinks he’s in a damn movie,” he mumbles. “It’s gonna get him killed.”

“He got in without any trouble,” Bruce points out despite the dread squeezing his heart. “He’s a good actor.”

“Or they’re just fucking desperate. No one in their right mind will work there if they can do literally anything else, you saw how quick they were to hire anyone who applies. They didn’t even do a proper background check.”

“Which will only work in Dick’s favor.”

“Whatever. I still don’t know what it is you two are trying to find.”

“Evidence,” Bruce tells him quietly. 

“You’ve already got evidence. Three pendrives of it. Can’t you just, I dunno, take _that_ to Gordon?”

“You know that won’t be enough. What’s on the tapes may be grounds for a disciplinary hearing and an inspection, maybe some of the guards getting the sack for show, but with the system as it is, I doubt it’ll even result in that. We need something stronger. We need proof of criminal activity no one will be able to ignore.”

“You honestly think you’re gonna find it?”

“We have to try.”

“Okay, I’m just gonna come out and say it. If you need someone to hack into Arkham so bad, why not ask Oracle? They’ve already shown they can hack pretty much anywhere.”

Stubborn denial speeds up Bruce’s spine and into his throat, and he tightens his grip on the wheel. “I’m not asking her,” he says. 

“Oh. So you know — I mean you think it’s a woman?”

“Yes.”

“Got any other leads?”

Bruce turns the ignition and lets the engine warm up, and murmurs, “Only suspicions. And I won’t share them until I know for sure.”

Jason crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re just too goddamn proud to ask for help.”

“Too careful,” Bruce corrects. “I still don’t know for sure who she is. This is a delicate project and I cannot entrust it to a stranger.”

“So you’re gonna risk Grayson’s life instead?”

And that hurts, as Jason probably knew it would. Bruce sighs and gives himself a moment before replying, “That’s not fair and you know it. I was ready to do it myself. You were there, you know that it was Dick who insisted.”

“Yeah. And you trust _him_ , obviously. But if…” Jason hesitates, obviously regretting what he’s started, and in that moment he looks so deeply, painfully _young_ that the ache flares up in Bruce’s gut and settles there. But then Jason rallies, and looks up at Bruce with the same determination that guides his fists to fly into the faces of criminals night after night.

He asks, “If I was the one to volunteer, would you trust me, too?”

Bruce’s _Yes_ comes a few seconds too late. He can see it in the way Jason’s body shuts down, rigid, angry. Dejected. 

“You’re disappointed in me, aren’t you,” he whispers.

 _What the fuck am I doing_ , Bruce asks himself as his mind falls into a momentary panic. He tries, “Jason, you’re too young. They would never hire a teenager. There was never a question of us sending _you_.”

“Yes, but I’m not talking about that, am I? I’m talking about… everything. You’re… dammit, you’re disappointed I’m not more like Grayson.”

Oh God. “Jason, no,” Bruce tries, the helplessness rising like bile into his mouth. “That’s not — It’s not like that. We may disagree on some things but that doesn’t mean —”

“Yes it does. You’re afraid you can’t control me. And if Grayson decided to stay you wouldn’t think twice about kicking me out.”

“ _No_ ,” Bruce tells him forcefully. “That wouldn’t happen. If that’s what you’re afraid of you can put it to rest right now. Dick has his own way now and you’re…”

“An adequate replacement?” Jason whispers in a voice that is much too small.

“A good soldier,” Bruce finishes quietly.

“… A good soldier.”

“Yes.” Bruce hesitates, and then lets his hand fall on Jason’s shoulder. 

Jason looks up at him. The mask hides his eyes all too well, but the tension around his mouth never releases, even as he sighs and turns away, gently shrugging Bruce’s hand off. 

“Let’s get going,” he says. “Unless you wanna sit here all night and stare longingly at the windows just in case something _might_ happen.” 

“No,” Bruce decides, glancing out at the spires of the Asylum, “you’re right. Let’s go. Dick will be okay.”

 _I can’t do this,_ he realizes as he guides the car away from its cover in the woods and onto the road. He just cannot handle teenagers. He had no idea what to do with Dick when he was that age, and now with Jason it’s so much worse. He’s entirely out of his depth as a guardian; and clearly it got bad enough that Jason can tell. It only adds to the tangle of anxiety already knotting in his stomach, and when he looks in the rear view mirror he sees the sharp, jagged silhouette of Arkham pulling away from him as it traps his other son inside, and for a second the panic gets so bad Bruce actually wants to slam down on the breaks and drive back and pull Dick out of there by the scruff of his shirt, kicking and screaming if he has to.

 _You can’t have him_ , he imagines himself screaming at the asylum with its quietly jeering walls and its greedy little hands reaching out for both of them. _You can’t. I won’t let you._

Somehow he manages to overcome himself and keep driving, and even swallows the urge to stop and throw up when Arkham disappears from view.

 

***

 

The fear doesn’t abate as the night runs its course. It’s still very much there the next day, pummeling at the walls of Bruce’s mind and chasing away even the hope of restful sleep. But then Dick comes home to report to them over dinner, and he is smiling and safe and unharmed, and the dread… ebbs, pulling away just a smidgen before its inevitable attempt to reclaim lost ground. At the very least breathing doesn’t hurt as much. 

It helps that Jason is attempting to be civil for once, or at least passive aggressive instead of openly hostile. Bruce doesn’t have any illusions about the talk they had last night somehow patching things up between them, but he’ll take what he can get, and so he tries to make himself sit still and pay attention to what Dick is telling them without begging him to put an end to this entire thing altogether.

“What passes for coffee in that place is probably the worst thing I ever had in my mouth, and I breathed sewer water,” Dick is telling them, light and easy, between bites of Alfred’s excellent chicken. “Still, drinking that sludge helps me get in character. And it does its job, too; I thought I’d never sleep again.” He flashes them a grin, reaching for water. “Another fun fact? They have this weird clock up above the reception desk that’s like, wayyyyyyyy up, you know the one, Bruce? Yeah so the thing is, no one knows how the clock got there. And Swanson says it keeps running late no matter how often they get Paul to fix it, which is a major issue ‘cause there’s no ladders there tall enough to reach it properly. Paul’s the janitor by the way, he’s kinda cool. Offered me a smoke when I was on a break and of course I said no, Bruce, don’t give me that look now.”

“Why don’t they just take it down?” Jason wonders. 

Dick shrugs. “Beats me. I think it’s a bit like, part of local folklore? Though why they’d need any more than they have already is anybody’s guess. I swear I never saw a place with more ghost stories. Doesn’t help that they keep Croc’s tank upstairs instead of the basement and that makes the pipes groan like the damned.”

“So did you see the ghost of Amadeus Arkham?” Jason asks over a smirk.

“Nah. I think he doesn’t waste his time on newbies. It was very anticlimactic. From the way you’ve been acting,” he looks pointedly at Bruce, “I kinda expected to see blood leaking from the walls.”

“Arkham is dangerous with or without ghosts,” Bruce says quietly. “Considering its history —”

“Yeah, yeah. Murder, madness, blood for mortar, I _know_.” Dick pauses to chew over a mouthful of chicken before continuing, “And I’m not saying that it’s a nice place. It’s not. Everyone hates working there, especially the nurses. Some of them probably do think it’s haunted. You can see it in their eyes. And with the noises, and the inmates, and the architecture, it’s kinda… yeah.” He goes quiet for a moment, considering. “But what’s evil about it is not supernatural,” he whispers. “It’s very very human. And that’s way worse.”

Bruce’s heart shrinks. “Did you see anything?”

“Not much,” Dick confesses. “I kept an eye out but no one trusts the new guy. I still gotta work for it. Had a shift with Aaron Cash though, you know, the sergeant? We escorted the nurses on their rounds. And one of the guys, I didn’t recognize him, one of the relatively normal ones, anyway, he… Well, when we got there, there was a lot of blood in his cell. On the walls. And he was lying on his cot with his forehead smashed open. The surveillance footage was missing, they said it was a camera glitch. They also said the guy had a habit of running into walls and maybe it’s true, but I don’t know. If it was and they knew about it, wouldn’t they keep him in one of the padded cells? And the wound didn’t look right. Not like an accident. The guy’s too out of it to talk. They transferred him to the medical and he’ll be okay, but…”

He falls quiet, picking at the salad. 

Bruce looks at him across the table. He asks, “Do you want to pull out?”

“What? No.” Dick puts down his fork and faces Bruce with a painfully earnest expression. “If anything it only makes me want to stay. Gotta get to the bottom of this, Bruce. They can’t keep getting away with this stuff.”

Bruce nods. The fear is slowly inching back, but from the other side surges pride so fierce it chokes him, and he has to seek refuge in the plate before him to hide it from the boys. 

His boys. Both of them.

“I did hear a story though,” Dick picks up after a moment, a glint in his eye. “Dunno how true it is, but basically, you know how Carter said the clown bit one guy’s ear off?”

Bruce’s head jerks up. “Yes?”

“Well apparently, when the Arkham people want to scare the noobs they tell them Joker stories. They said I should be grateful he’s no longer there because this one time, he went and bit off some guard’s, uh…” he glances over at Jason, “… privates.”

“What,” Jason sits back, his eyes huge, “you mean, all of them? His _entire junk_?”

“ _No_ , not his entire junk,” Dick sighs. “Jesus, don’t make me imagine that, how would that even be — no, I mean, he bit off the guy’s penis. Well. Some of it.”

“Damn,” Jason breathes, and a note of respect creeps into his voice.

Bruce keeps his eyes on Dick. He can feel the warmed-up metal of the fork etching hard lines into the inside of his palm. “Is this true?” he demands.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just an urban legend. There’s lots of Joker stories going around that sound just like that. The thing is, though, I asked around, and many of the older guys? They didn’t want to talk about it. They kinda went quiet and looked at the ground and told me to mind my own business. One even snapped at another one to stop telling that story to new guys. And that’s…”

“Suspicious,” Jason finishes, and for a brief moment, the three of them are all on the same wavelength.

“Did you get a name of the victim?” Bruce asks quietly. His voice sounds like it’s coming through a padding of cotton.

“No, but I’ll try to find that out when I go back there tonight. You’re gonna want to pay him a visit, right?”

“Yes.” Bruce can’t quite get himself to nod, and when he chooses his next words, they come out struggling, raking sharp fingernails over his tongue. “If it’s true then I’d like to know how Joker found himself in a position to do that in the first place.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought too. The uniform pants aren’t exactly silk, it’d take quite an effort to bite through the jeans. Croc could have done it easy but the clown…”

“Wait.” Jason sits up in his chair, looking at both of them in turn. “You don’t think —”

“I don’t think anything yet,” Bruce lies, “but we need to look into it.”

“I agree,” Dick says seriously. “They sold it to me like an _oooooh, Arkham so scary, you gonna wet your pants your first day here_ kinda story and I think that’s how it was sold to them, too, but like I said, the older guards didn’t exactly reassure me.”

“Did you talk to any of the doctors?”

“There were only two of them there that night. Lancer and Biggs. Neither very chatty. Dr. Quinzel is supposed to have the night shift tonight so I’ll try and see if I can get anything out of her, but she’s still kinda new too so I don’t know if she’s gonna have anything useful.”

“Get the name of the guard the Joker supposedly bit, if he exists,” Bruce tells him. “It could… it could be a lead.”

“Right.” Dick takes a moment to study his face, and then offers, “You could also ask Joker? I mean, he’s right here. And he likes to brag.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bruce manages.

“Well, I dunno. If the story checks out there’s a good chance you’ll be looking at statutory rape, if not… you know, the actual thing. Investigating that behind his back, without his consent… Do you think _that’s_ a good idea?”

“We’re jumping to conclusions here with an anecdote as our only lead,” Jason reminds them. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Dick nods, reaching for his water again. For a few minutes they eat in silence, each of them preoccupied with their own thoughts, until Dick clears his throat.

“Dammit,” he offers quietly, with a bittersweet smile. “This story could be comedy gold when you think about it. The Joker, biting off people’s junks? And here I am totally unable to milk it for a single joke.”

“That’s because it’s gross,” Jason tells him. “Thinking about the clown and dicks in one sentence is gross.”

Dick’s forehead furrows. “Hey.”

After that the two of them lapse into a familiar back-and-forth, but Bruce is already tuning them out. Let them ease the tension with banter if that’s what they need to move away from the potential stifling enormity of the topic. He can’t do that. He can’t allow himself to. 

What if. What if. What if…

He has two more weeks to go before he can visit Joker in person. There were moments in the last week when he regretted his choice of punishment, but never as acutely as right now. There is an urge in him to throw a resigned _fuck you_ at his own decision and storm into Joker’s rooms right now to beg him for reassurance, _Please tell me it’s fake, please tell me it wasn’t like that, please tell me they didn’t hurt you._

But he can’t. If he went back on his word now Joker would no longer respect his resolve and authority, which could end in disaster. He can’t give the clown a reason to think he’s weak, that he’s… getting too comfortable with him. That he’ll keep forgiving him no matter what.

Besides, it’s no use. Bruce already knows the story is true, with that bone-deep certainty that cloaks him whenever he’s close to cracking a case. Every instinct in him tells him so. The question to determine now is just how bad this whole thing was, and that… 

He looks at his plate. 

He can’t eat a single bite more.

“Hey, Bruce,” Dick asks quietly. “Is everything all right?”

Bruce can’t bring himself to look up. He pushes his chair back and stands. “Finish your meal,” he tells them stiffly. “I have to… I need to go.”

He feels their eyes on him as he leaves the dining room, but they don’t try to stop him.

 

***

 

Dick doesn’t manage to get Bruce a name that night. Or the next. 

Someone else does.

“Batman?” Oracle’s synthetic voice catches him in the evening when he’s still in the cave, police scanners on one screen, the Arkham files on another and the feed from Joker’s rooms on another. The blank screen on his far right glares to life and presents him with another Arkham personnel file, of a white middle-aged man the name of Andrew Lautner. “I believe this is the man you’re looking for.”

Bruce isn’t even surprised at this point to discover that Oracle can hack into his own private system even with the new security measures in place. He sighs. “Is there a point to asking how you did that?”

“Nope.” The digitally-altered voice carries a hint of smugness. “No point in asking how I know you’re investigating Arkham, either. Your best bet right now is just to accept that I know everything.”

Bruce remembers Clark’s reassurance, _You can trust Oracle._ He’s still reluctant to take it at face value but he looks at the file anyway, noting the dates of the man’s employment at Arkham.

“Contract terminated due to injury,” he reads aloud. “There’s no description of the accident.”

“Exactly,” Oracle confirms. “But if you check the records at Gotham General you’ll discover that a man named Andrew Lautner was admitted that very same night with an injury that, shall we say, matches the story.”

Bruce checks the dates again. If it’s true, the incident happened four years ago. “Do you have the file?”

“Yeah. Here you go.” Lautner’s Arkham file is replaced with his hospital records, and Bruce studies them carefully.

Everything checks out. Jesus, it _checks out_. He looks at the man’s face and feels very, very cold.

“Where is he now?” he demands sharply.

“Dead.”

“What?”

“He’s dead,” Oracle repeats. “He left Gotham as soon as he was discharged. Changed his name to Allen Smith. Five months later they found him dead in New York. Joker gas.”

Bruce stares at the file. He feels numb, a familiar sense of detachment creeping up on him along with the cold fingers of the kind of pointed, subdued anger, not so much the flailing, chaotic fire but an arrow made of ice. He pieces the events together, the rumors, the dates, the injury. “It was revenge,” he whispers.

“Maybe,” Oracle allows. “He died during one of the clown’s escapes. And he wasn’t the only one.”

Seven other employee files jump onto the screen. All of them are men, most of them white, aged from around 25 to 50. Bruce recognizes five of them from his visits to Arkham over the years. 

“All of these men were found dead in their apartments shortly after leaving Arkham. Some of them in Gotham and some, like Lautner, in other cities under fake names. Not all were killed with Joker gas but they were all murdered, no question about that. When no Joker gas was involved the investigations went nowhere.”

Bruce stares at the files. “How —”

“I’m good at spotting patterns,” Oracle says succinctly. “And all these men worked at the Joker’s ward at one point or another.”

And now they’re all dead. Which isn’t at all unusual for Arkham employees, but…

“They all worked at Arkham at roughly the same time as Lautner,” Oracle points out. Bruce nods. He’s noticed that too.

“Can you get me names of other employees from that period?”

“You have one right under your nose. Benjamin Carter quit his job at Arkham a few weeks after the Lautner incident.”

Bruce frowns. Carter was the one who first tried to wheel Joker away after Bruce got too close in the garden, triggering the chain reaction of disaster. With his history it makes sense that he’d be extra careful around Joker, and curiously, though Joker made it clear he remembers him from Arkham, the man’s presence alone didn’t seem to trigger him — he only reacted with violence when Carter tried to impose his will on him. That, and the fact that he’s still alive, seems to point to his innocence in whatever it was the other men did. Even so, he might know something, and Bruce makes a mental note to stop him for a chat when he finishes his shift in a couple of hours. 

“It may not be what you think it is,” Oracle says after a moment. “They may have been decent men who didn’t laugh at his joke or withheld his pudding. The clown’s killed for less. Maybe they were just… in the way.”

“Lautner’s injury says otherwise,” Bruce says. He hesitates. “Thank you for your help.”

“I’m not doing this for you _or_ the clown,” Oracle snaps, the barb detectable even through the masking effects. “I’ll be in touch if I find anything else. Oracle out.”

Bruce glances at the Joker feed. The clown is on the balcony, sitting in a fort of pillows and blankets, wrapped up tight despite the warm weather and gazing out at the distant glow of Gotham beyond the woods. His face is wan, tight, shaded with the deep charcoal of anxiety and lingering anger. His fingers scratch absently down the sides of his face, one two three, one two three, and his lips move in a jamble of words too quiet for the cameras to catch. 

_What have you done_ , Bruce asks the pale figure on the screen. _What have_ they _done_?

“Master Bruce?” Alfred calls from the top of the staircase. “I brought refreshments. And your daily dose of nagging.”

Bruce sighs. “Can we do a raincheck on the nagging? I’m… busy.”

“Yes, I can see that. Gazing forlornly at our clown guest even though it was you who decided to banish yourself from his presence must burn a heroic amount of calories.”

“Alfred.”

“Hence, refreshments.” Alfred sets down a plate of Bruce’s favorite pastries and a vegetable shake. “To replenish all that energy you expel on brooding. And what’s this?” He points to the files from Oracle, one eyebrow riding up. “I thought you already had all the intelligence from the good doctor memorized.”

“This isn’t from Dr. Mulligan,” Bruce explains quietly. “It’s from Oracle.”

“Oh.” Alfred is silent for a spell, and then asks, “Had a little chat with her, did you, Master Bruce?”

“Just now, yes. And I’d really like to know how the hell she keeps hacking into my systems no matter what I do.”

“Maybe she’s just better than you.”

“Thank you, Alfred.”

Alfred gives his shoulder a fond pat, saying, “Anytime, Master Bruce. So, do you have an idea as to who she might be?”

“Well…” Bruce hesitates for a moment, reaching for the shake. But Alfred has always been his primary sounding board, so eventually he decides to share, “I suspect it might be Lois Lane.”

“… Lois Lane,” Alfred echoes.

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Bruce turns to face him, searching for confirmation in Alfred’s face, which, as if to spite him, remains infuriatingly blank. “It was Clark who told me to trust her. He was the one who told me she’s a woman. And Lois is a celebrated journalist with a network of connections and resources which could be easily utilized to aid the crimefighters. She has access to LexCorp technologies, too. Maybe she decided to start helping Clark in more tangible ways.”

For a moment, Alfred says nothing. Bruce, who is watching him closely, notices that the blank expression isn’t as effortless as usual, though — there is a strain to it, manifesting in lines breaking around Alfred’s eyes.

“Well,” he says at length, “this is certainly… a sound theory, sir.”

“You’re not convinced.”

“Miss Lane is a very busy woman, Master Bruce,” Alfred says, then takes a moment to clear his throat. “Could she really spare the time for this sort of… activity?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce admits. “But she’s my only suspect so far.”

“The only one?”

Bruce narrows his eyes at him. “Alfred, are you trying to tell me something?”

“Good heavens, no. Far be it from me to tell you anything, sir. You’re the detective in this family.” But there’s sharpness to his sarcasm, and an edge that goes beyond the usual verbal sparring, and when he bows the gesture is stiffly exaggerated. “Now, if that is all, I think there’s silver upstairs in need of my polishing expertise.” 

“Alfred —”

“I will tell you this, sir: get some sleep. Fifteen-minute naps can only get you so far and believe me, the clown is not going anywhere. Maybe once you get some _proper_ rest you will be able to see things more… clearly.”

Bruce chooses not to comment on that, which is moot anyway since Alfred is already on his way back up the stairs. Bruce watches him go, sipping on the shake, and then turns his eyes and mind alike back to Joker…

… Who is still on the balcony, but now his head is bent and hidden in his knees and arms, and his fingers are raking through his hair, twitchy, anxious, sharp. Something jerks his body, maybe laughter, maybe something else. 

And Bruce is not prepared how much this sight _hurts_.

Fiercely, he wishes he could just… go. Get to him. Maybe disable the force field around the balcony for long enough to lower himself onto it, to perch down beside Joker. Sit next to him. Ask, gently. _Why did you kill these men? What happened at Arkham? What did they do?_

In his imagination, Joker would make a big show of turning his back on him, maybe telling him to go away. But then he’d thaw and scoot closer, and Bruce would take his hands in his, and press in, and ease the anxious twitches away. And then perhaps Joker would rest his head on Bruce’s shoulder like he did the last time they were so close, and Bruce would open up his arm, and…

He closes his eyes. His hands come up to try and rub the fantasy clean from his mind. 

He’s just learned that Joker killed even more people than he’d thought, and _that’s_ how he chooses to react? Joker was right. They need a break. Bruce has become far too comfortable with him. 

Still, the urge to come up to the balcony doesn’t let up. Not when Bruce launches himself back into his work, and not when he finally gives up and goes to put on the suit. The mental image of him and Joker sitting together on the balcony persists like a tick sucking deep into his skin, and he has to remind himself, _No. No. No. Two more weeks, that was the deal._

He’s too tired and shaken to wonder why it’s getting so difficult to resist.

 

***

 

Carter looks surprised to see him waiting in full batsuit by the guard exit of the Manor. If Lakeisha is, she doesn’t let it show, and just brushes past him with a slight nod and not much else. 

“Thought you were taking a break,” Carter says, lingering. “Uh, the new shift are already upstairs if you wanna —”

“I want to talk to you,” Bruce tells him.

“Oh.” Carter doesn’t look at all happy with this development, but then he shrugs and stands a little to the side of the staircase so he can lean his back against the wall and light a cigarette. He settles in with a quiet, “Sure,” and offers Bruce a smoke. 

When Bruce declines, Carter smirks, and looks up at the sky. “I’d like to cut right down to the chase if you don’t mind,” he says. “Wife’s waiting. She’ll rant my head off if I’m late.”

“Works for me,” Bruce says. “How well did you know Andrew Lautner?”

Carter stares at him. He mutters, “Well, shit.” He takes a long drag, his gaze plunging to examine the tips of his polished shoes nestled in the neatly-trimmed grass. “You’re onto that, huh?” he asks quietly.

“Right now I’m trying to determine what ‘that’ is.”

“Shit,” Carter repeats. He glances up at Bruce before letting his eyes drop again. “Shit is what it is, Bats. I tried to stay away so I don’t know much, I’m gonna tell you that right now.”

“I already know Lautner is dead. I’m trying to determine what happened.”

“The only guys who know for sure are the ones who were there,” Carter tells him. “All the rest of us got were rumors and the sight of that idiot Lautner taken out on a gurney, his crotch bleeding through the sheet, and the Joker shut in solitary for three months.”

Bruce closes his eyes. He breathes, “So it’s true.” 

“I’m not even gonna ask how you know about it but yeah, it’s true. The cover-up job on that one was masterclass. It’s not like anyone cares what goes on at Arkham as long as the crazies stay put, and you learn to expect the clown will find a way to maim and maul every once in a while so normally they don’t really bother, but… yeah, a scene like that? There would be… questions.”

Bruce’s voice hardens. “What do you know?”

“Like I said, not much,” Carter insists. “Why do you think I’m still alive? I stayed well away from the high risk freaks. That place is like a fishbowl though, so I… heard stuff. Stuff about the clown. About how if he liked a guard enough, he would try to get the guy to fuck him. It’s possible,” he carries on, oblivious to the blaze suddenly exploding to life in Bruce’s gut. “There’s places where the surveillance don’t reach. Your standard broom closet, old passages, the cells in the subbasements. They said Lautner was one of those guys for a while. Apparently that didn’t work out so well for either of them though, huh.”

“Is that… accepted?” Bruce asks quietly, trying and failing to contain the fury worming into his face and threatening to leak through the cracks.

His mind flashes him images of Lautner, the picture from the personnel file, with Joker. Inside a filthy broom closet, one in his guard uniform, the other in the orange jumpsuit. Together. Pressed close, touching. The beast roars and wants _out_ , and Bruce has to tell himself, _Stop it. Stop it. Not now._

By the wall, out here in the cool night air of the real world, Carter shrugs. “Yeah, more or less. Place like that, you wanna find something to keep you from going crazy. You want something to take the edge off. Inmates and guards alike, they’re all stewing in that hellhole together, and sometimes it’s ‘us vs them’ and sometimes it’s ‘any warm body will do,’ you know? It got so that I couldn’t keep track of who’s fucking who. Doctors and nurses. Nurses and guards. Guards and doctors. Inmates and other inmates, and inmates and… well, everyone.”

“Inmates,” Bruce repeats hollowly, “who cannot consent.”

“Yeah,” Carter agrees. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? I don’t know how true that is about Lautner because frankly I can’t imagine why anyone would want to even touch the clown, but he was one nasty son of a bitch himself, so maybe they clicked over that? But I’m gonna tell you this, Bats, if he really was fucking the Joker he wasn’t the only one doing it with an inmate. There’s plenty of those poor fuckers in there who are far easier pickings. Psychotic, insecure, scared, you can talk them into anything _and_ they won’t try to maul you if you get too close. Most are just plain lonely. Many of them will get their kicks anywhere they can, you know? One compliment, one kind word, and they’ll be climbing all over you like a goddamn tree. Plus, you know, half the time they’re all drugged out of their minds anyway. And the kinds of bastards that get jobs at Arkham, they’re not above using that. Taking advantage. Sometimes they fired people for that, but only when they were stupid enough to get caught in flagrante. As long as no one catches you with your pants down you’re fine. No one bothers to follow up on rumors. And even if you’re fired there won’t be any criminal charges because, well, you know how the system works.”

Bruce does, God help him. “Names,” he demands. It comes out closer to a bark than anything uttered in a human voice. “I need names of all the men you remember who took advantage of the inmates.”

“I can’t know for sure, okay?” Carter insists. “I told you, I did my best to stay away from that shit. What I know I only heard on the grapevine. ‘Sides, lots of those bastards don’t work there no more. Fired, quit or dead, you know the turnover rate that place has. I don’t know who’s who anymore.”

“ _Names_.”

“Well, okay.” Carter studies him carefully, narrowing his eyes through the screen of cigarette smoke. “I’ll get you a list tomorrow. That all?”

“I want you to look at this,” Bruce says, stepping closer and handing Carter a hand-written list of the other murdered guards. “They all worked on the Joker ward. Do you recognize the names?”

“I knew Jimmy,” Carter allows, squinting at the names. “Donnel. Cartwright. Miller. Kosminsky. Why?”

“Were they good guards?”

“Oh hell no. They were rotten. I know for sure they took bribes and smuggled in all kinds of contraband. Drugs, weapons, intel… And I know Cartwright had a thing going with one of the meeker female patients at some point. I think that’s what got him fired. If you’re looking for bastards to interrogate they’re a good place to start.”

“It would be,” Bruce agrees coldly, “except they’re all dead.”

“Shit.” Carter lets out a long breath, his eyes going wide. “All of them? Even Jimmy?”

“Yes. And I’m trying to figure out why.”

“The clown?”

“Possibly.”

“Shit. _Shit._ ”

Carter stumbles back, and his hands shake when he takes a long drag on his dwindling cigarette. He stares off into space. Then, his gaze moves up, to the patchwork of light thrown on the grass from Joker’s windows.

“I’m starting to wonder if Lakeisha didn’t have the right idea,” he whispers. 

Bruce says nothing. If he opened his mouth, he might have said _I was going to replace you anyway_ , if only for the fact that Carter obviously knew about the corruption at Arkham and did nothing about it. He doesn’t want that kind of person looking after Joker, and he doesn’t want the man’s presence to remind Joker of his Arkham days either. But it’s not like he has crowds of volunteers to pick from, so he makes himself shelf that decision for later. 

“I’ll be waiting for that list,” he says quietly. “And anything else you think I should know.”

“Right. Right.” Carter’s hands are still shaking, and he’s staring up at Joker’s windows.

Bruce uses the opportunity to pull himself up on the grapples and disappear up on the roof. He lands in a spot that gives him a clear view of Joker’s balcony, and he pauses, giving in to the urge to glance down. 

Joker is still there. Still huddled in on himself, still swathed in blankets, shaking, looking like the picture of misery. He is so close, and it would be so easy for Bruce to let himself touch down now, and lay his hand on the mess of green hair.

But his thoughts are a mess of red-hot outrage, and Bruce doesn’t trust himself. He needs to give himself time to let the blaze steep, until it crystallizes into the kind of cold, calculating fury he can mold for his use. Joker shouldn’t see him like this, and it could end… badly. 

Still, he lingers on his perch up on the roof for a while longer, watching and breathing and hurting. Joker doesn’t let his head lift once, not until the murky sky in the distance suddenly lights up with the familiar shape of the bat-symbol. Both Bruce and Joker look up to see it at the same time, and then the clown, still wrapped in his purple blanket, gets to his feet. He gazes at the symbol for a few seconds, and then turns sharply, and disappears into the parlor. The door slams shut behind him, rattling the panes and Bruce’s heart alike. 

His comm link crackles. Jason’s voice urges, “Batman.” 

“I know,” Bruce responds, his eyes tracing the Joker’s shadow as it moves about the parlor. “I’m going down to the cave now.”

As he does, he thinks about what Carter told him, and by the time he and Jason get on the road he is reasonably sure he can keep the rage under lock and key and not let it out on whoever is stirring mayhem in Gotham tonight. 

He’s still no closer to understanding what happened than he was before the conversation, but…

The pieces are there. All he needs now is an edge.

 

***

 

Though Joker is noticeably more anxious and agitated from day to day — aggressively painting on the walls, exercising, dancing jerkily around the rooms, talking to himself nearly all the time — two weeks pass without any major incidents. Stubborn and proud, he seems to want to show Bruce that he isn’t affected by his absence at all, and lets the contrary sentiment guide him through the long, long days. In some ways, it’s a relief. But in others, as they pass through the second week, Bruce starts to wonder that perhaps, out of the two of them, he is the one who has a harder time sticking to his word, and _that_ , on top of everything else, chases all hopes of sleep from his mind for good. 

But then the third week rolls around. And maybe the stubbornness isn’t enough anymore, or maybe he has run out of pride, or maybe it’s the meds, but eventually something in Joker… breaks.

It starts in the middle of the night, when Bruce and Jason are out fighting Mr. Freeze. The bat symbol burns high in the sky, shimmering off the coating of ice that spikes over the East End. Police cars flash in red and blue, and the barrels of guns gleam threateningly, ready to rain bullets down on the man in the protective suit spewing ice at everything he can spot as he tries to dodge Bruce’s batarangs.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred breaks through the haze of action as the comm link activates, “are you just about ready to wrap up?”

His voice is… strange, Bruce notices as he dives under a blast of ice. 

Something’s wrong.

“Hopefully,” Bruce pants, trying to get in a position to get a good angle on Fries. “I can’t talk now, Alfred.”

“Very good.” Alfred hesitates, his voice still tight, on edge. “Still, if you could, ah, speed things up, there’s something…”

“What is it?”

“Actually, sir, don’t trouble yourself. I’m sure we can handle it.”

“Alfred?”

But the connection is already broken, and just in time for Bruce to leap out of the way of another blast. 

He tries to make quick work of Fries after that, urged by the worry twining around his heart. He doesn’t linger to escort Freeze back to Arkham, trusting that the GCPD will be able to handle it from there. He tries to get back in touch with Alfred as he speeds home with Jason tailing him on his motorbike, but it’s no use, Alfred doesn’t respond. 

When he gets close enough to see the Manor ablaze, the windows lit up in activity like they usually are only for charity functions, his heart sinks all the way to his feet. There’s an ambulance parked just outside the front door. He can see silhouettes of people running back and forth as he swerves up the drive, and he runs up to the third floor still in costume, passing busy, determined orderlies who pause in their tracks to gaze after him in wonder. 

He gets to the third floor and Joker’s wing just in time to catch Sandra Ramirez, Lakeisha’s replacement, exiting through the outer security doors and letting it slide shut behind her. She looks harassed, her long curly hair escaping from her tight ponytail and her face marked with shadows, and she dabs a white towel at her forehead, breathing heavily.

She freezes when she spots him. Her eyes go wide. 

Then, after a moment, she reaches for her walkie-talkie and speaks into it, “Hey, Lee? You there? Will you tell Doc Mulligan that Batman’s here?”

“What happened?” Bruce demands, but she shakes her head, ear pressed into the walkie-talkie. 

“Okay,” she sighs, pressing her eyes shut. “Yeah, I’ll tell him. Over.”

She raises her eyes to Bruce, and they look tired. 

“Dr. Mulligan says not to let you in,” she tells Bruce quietly. “Sorry.”

“What,” Bruce repeats, “ _happened_?”

Ramirez sighs again, rubbing her temple. She looks like she’d rather be anywhere else, and it is, Bruce remembers, only her third day here. 

“He ran into the force field,” she whispers, hugging herself. “Repeatedly.”

For a moment, it feels that some of Mr. Freeze’s blasts hit home after all. Bruce finds it hard to breathe through the shards of ice stuck up his throat. “What?”

“He sat on the balcony,” Ramirez explains, looking down at the carpet. “Brooding. He’s been doing that a lot. And then your signal came on, and… something must have happened. I don’t know. One minute he’s sitting there babbling to himself, the next he’s up on his feet, and coming up to the rail, and reaching out. He touched the force field once and it burned his finger. He laughed and did it again. And that somehow got him angry, because he started to pound on it, and… yell stuff, and… and then he threw his whole body at it like he wanted to jump out, and, well, it… it burnt him.” She closes her eyes again, like that could help wipe the images out of her mind. She lets out a shaky breath. She whispers, “It was horrible.” 

Bruce tries to speak, and fails. An orderly runs up the stairs and past him, carrying an armful of ointments and ice packs. He shoots Bruce a fearful look but shakes it off when Ramirez enters the security code to let him through, and Bruce takes a few steps forward.

“Let me in,” he demands.

Ramirez shakes her head. “Dr. Mulligan’s inside,” she tells him, “and so are the orderlies and two other guards. I think they’ll be taking him to the hospital just as soon as they can move him.”

Bruce swallows. “I want to go with you.”

Ramirez hesitates. “I don’t think that’s a —”

The outer door slides open again, releasing Alfred, pale and jacket-less but collected, wiping his hands on a handkerchief. He pauses when he spots Bruce and takes care to act surprised before he schools his face into professional neutrality and greets him with a nod. “Ah. Good to see you made it, sir. You’ll be pleased to know that everything is now in hand.”

“I want to see the prisoner, Mr. Pennyworth,” Bruce demands, struggling not to shout. “Let me in.”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question. Dr. Mulligan was very strict about that. You are not to be let in and you are not to follow the ambulance.”

“But —”

“Loath as I am to refuse our city’s hero anything,” Alfred insists, a note of steel settling in his voice, “we do have the situation under control. We don’t need any further assistance. And the inmate is in no state to appreciate your presence anyway, so there’s no need to waste valuable time haunting the corridor… sir.”

He strides past Bruce with a meaningful glance, and reluctantly, Bruce follows him, though not without internal struggle. Once they find themselves out of the way, Alfred whispers, “You will find the footage in the cave, no doubt. I’d tell you not to watch it but I’d only be wasting my breath. I will need to see our nightly guests out, so let me reiterate, Master Bruce: you will _not_ follow the ambulance, is that clear?”

“We’ll see about that,” Bruce snaps. 

“Master Bruce.” Alfred stops him from stalking away with a firm hand on his arm, squeezing through the cape. “I’m serious. I know you don’t want to hear it but you’re very likely the cause of tonight’s kerfuffle, and I cannot imagine that seeing your face even as he’s briefly transported to a venue not associated with you will in any way help our guest pull himself together. In this, Dr. Mulligan is quite right. You’re worried and you feel responsible, but just this once, please trust other people to know what they’re doing.”

Bruce works his throat, and thinks back to the Arkham files. He thinks of the videos of the electroshocks, and sham therapies, and abuse. He thinks of Andrew Lautner. 

“I can’t,” he manages, and it comes out closer to a sob. He can’t trust anyone with Joker anymore. Not after…

He just can’t. 

Some of the edge in Alfred’s face melts away. His grip softens, and he smoothes his hand down Bruce’s arm. “I’m sorry, Master Bruce,” he says gently. “It really is for the best. For both of you.”

Bruce doesn’t have it in him to respond. He lets his head drop, and he pulls away.

 

***

 

He doesn’t exactly follow the ambulance, in the end, but he uses Joker’s bracelet to track its progress and determine which room they put him in. Then, he gets in the car, and peers into the windows of Gotham General until he finds the right room, and then he doesn’t leave until he is absolutely sure that the place is safe.

He can’t see much of Joker himself. The clown is heavily sedated, which, judging from the amount of bandages covering him, is probably a good thing. He looks small and pathetic lying there in the spacious hospital bed, alone in the dark room amid the quiet thrum of machines, and Bruce finds it much too hard to make himself leave. 

_I’ll be back_ , he promises both Joker and himself as he gets back on the road. _Soon._

 

***

 

They keep Joker there for a week, and Bruce comes to check on him twice every night. By the time they discharge him and transport him back to the Manor, Bruce is a nervous wreck, and he’s pacing the cave impatiently until it’s safe for him to go up, at which point he all but runs to the third floor, to find…

That Joker doesn’t want to see him.

“Go away,” the clown says quietly as soon as Bruce comes in through the door. He has his back to Bruce, standing there in thin pajamas and gazing out the windows, bandages and band-aids still covering patches of healing skin. 

“But, Joker —”

“Go. I don’t want you here.”

Bruce waits for two minutes more, and wants to keep protesting. 

And then in the end he does leave, because respecting Joker’s wishes is the least he can do.

Even though his heart feels like it’s made of lead.

 

***

 

He comes back the next time his scheduled private hour arrives, and this time around, he brings flowers.

Joker looks at him, and then at the flowers Bruce carries in a bottle of Styrofoam: plumes of lilac and forget-me-nots, vivid and bright. Bruce leaves the bottle on the floor by the door, and says, “If you want me to leave, I will.”

Joker looks at him for one minute and a half.

And then suddenly his face changes from shut-off to nakedly desperate, and he starts forward, and jumps over the sofa, and breaches the distance between them in just a few wide leaps. Bruce locks his muscles, expecting attack, but then next thing he knows he has skinny arms and legs locking around his neck and middle, and a mouth full of green hair, and he stumbles backward before he catches himself and holds Joker up, and it takes him a moment to register just what is happening.

“I hate you,” Joker whispers into the kevlar even as he presses his face to the crook of Bruce’s neck, hugging him for all he’s worth. “God, I hate you so much, you giant, stubborn, righteous _idiot_.”

The flowers are on the floor, the Styrofoam bottle kicked over, the water spilled all over the carpet. Bruce is holding Joker up with arms hooked around his waist and under the backside, and when he turns his face the skin of his chin brushes against Joker’s ear, the curls tickling his mouth. 

The white skin is warm. It’s just by Bruce’s lips. It smells of soap and citrus, and Bruce’s head spins, and he wants to press closer so fiercely he has to bite on his bottom lip to stop himself from brushing it against Joker’s temple.

He starts moving forward. Joker clings to him as Bruce slowly navigates his way to the sofa, where he tries to sit backwards, his arms still full of warm, sharp-edged clown. Somehow he manages to settle them both without falling over, and Joker doesn’t let go even then, wriggling until he’s comfortably nestled in Bruce’s lap, completely heedless of his bandages. 

But Bruce isn’t, and when his arms come up around Joker again he’s careful to avoid the burnt spots. He locks one arm around Joker’s back and rests the other in his hair, stroking through it gently. He breathes out, and smells nothing but citrus.

“Why did you do that?” he asks quietly, but Joker is shaking his head, pressing closer to Bruce.

“Shhhhh,” he whispers raspingly, “don’t ruin it. I’m still mad at you but I don’t want to talk, so just — let’s just —”

He nuzzles Bruce’s neck. Bruce silently agrees, and holds him closer.

They sit like that in silence, holding each other, breathing the hour away. At some point their heartbeats sync into a familiar rhythm, and Bruce closes his eyes as he hides his mouth in Joker’s shoulder, and for a moment, the noise in his head quiets down from a blare of horns into a gentle fountain trickle.

He could fall asleep like that, he realizes, even as sand — and something else entirely — pricks hot under his eyelids, weighing them down. In here. Lulled by the count of his enemy’s breath, touched by the smell of citrus.

The thought is warm, like bedsheets after a restful night. Bruce doesn’t have it in him to rationalize it away.

 

***

 

Then, a few days later, Bruce finds the edge he’s been missing. 

Just not in a form he expected.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred says politely, sticking his head into the study where Bruce is parsing through the materials he and Dick have slowly been amassing. It’s still far from a breakthrough but they’re gradually getting the suspects rounded up, the case against them building night after night into something they could perhaps present to Jim with reasonable assurance that something would be done.

“Yes, Alfred,” Bruce responds without lifting his gaze from the documents. 

“You have a visitor.”

“Tell them I’m not home.”

“Normally I would, sir, but… let’s just say that this is someone you will want to see.”

“Alfred, I’m busy.”

“Just trust me on this one, sir.”

Bruce sighs, sitting back in his chair and squinting up into the sunlight streaming through the windows. He gets up. “Fine.”

It’ll be good to stretch his back after hours of sitting, anyway, he thinks as he rolls his shoulders and turns his stiff neck to the sides. 

He follows Alfred out of the study…

… and stops dead in his tracks once he sees the person waiting for him beyond.

_Oh God._

“Barbara,” he whispers.

Barbara Gordon is right there in the corridor outside his study, sitting in a wheelchair, looking painfully beautiful with her long flaming hair collected in a ponytail and glasses over her eyes. She is watching Bruce with an expression that is almost aggressively determined, and the sight of her takes Bruce’s breath away.

He hasn’t seen her in… God, how long has it been? He doesn’t even remember. Suddenly the weight of all those months — almost two years, now — crashes down on him, and the guilt threatens to swallow him whole right where he stands.

Jesus, _Barbara_.

She doesn’t give him any time to find his balance. Instead, her eyes flash with a hard, unforgiving gleam, and she demands, “I want to see him.”

Bruce blinks. He finally finds something resembling a voice.

“I’m not sure —”

“Bruce,” she cuts him off, cold and merciless, “don’t even try. I’m finally ready and I want to see him. I have a _right_ to see him. Now you can either step aside and let Dick take me there or you can come with me. Those are your only options.”

They all stand there and look at him, Dick, Alfred, Barbara. A united front, waiting for his reaction, ready to fight if need be. Fight _against_ him. And he loves them, all of them, but he doesn’t remember the last time he felt this acutely alone.

Bruce looks into Barbara’s eyes…

He sighs. 

“You’re right,” he admits. “You deserve this.”

She looks surprised, but nods, some of the tension in her face easing. “Let’s go,” she says. 

Bruce begins to move behind the wheelchair, next to Dick, but Barbara takes care of it and starts pushing herself down the corridor without their help. Dick exchanges a look with Bruce and they both fall into step behind her, Alfred leading the way to Joker’s wing. 

Since Bruce is not wearing the batsuit they have to wait for one of the guards to come down and escort them in. The air is tense, thick, as Winston reluctantly admits them inside. 

They file into the room, first Winston, then Barbara, then Bruce and Dick bringing up the rear. Alfred decides to wait for them outside. Joker wanders out of the gym to meet them, curious, and his eyes round as they land on Barbara.

They look at one another for a long, long time. 

And then Barbara says, quietly, “You took nothing from me. Do you hear me? Nothing.”

She turns without waiting for a reply. She makes for the door. Dick follows with a lingering glance at Joker, and Bruce is the last to leave, glancing over his shoulder.

Joker sees them off with a smirk and a respectful bow in Barbara’s direction. She’s impressed him, Bruce can tell. He doesn’t know what to think about it.

Outside, it feels like a hand released its grip on his lungs. He stands there and breathes in silence, heavy and relieved all at once, and he doesn’t know why but it feels like they’ve all just passed a very important test he didn’t even know was coming. 

“I did it,” Barbara is whispering, clutching Dick’s hand as he strokes his hand down her hair. 

“You did, Babs,” Dick agrees, warm and gentle, kneeling beside her wheelchair. “You did it and now it’s over. It’s over. You did it.”

“I feel like throwing up,” Barbara confesses, and tries to laugh breathlessly before giving up on it and just taking in gulps of air. “Oh God, it feels so… I don’t even know.”

Alfred comes up to face her too, and bends down to hug her, saying, “It’s _so_ good to see you here again, Barbara. I am very proud of you.”

“Thank you, Alfred,” she sobs, hugging him back, and once again as he watches them Bruce feels the dull sting of loneliness cutting him wide open. He wants to come up to Barbara too, and to congratulate her, and tell her he’s proud of her as well. But he doesn’t know if she’d accept it from him. He doesn’t know if she’d want it.

So he stands to the side and gives them time, to breathe and process and experience the moment. He watches them and aches in silence.

Until Barbara turns to him with an expression that’s brimming with pain and pride in equal measure, and she lets out a long exhale, and holds out her hand. 

“Come here, you big baby,” she whispers. “I can’t believe I’m saying that but I missed you.”

Slowly, trying to swallow against the bile in his throat, Bruce kneels by her chair and takes her hand. He squeezes it, hard. He takes a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

She gives him a smile that’s more bitter than sweet and, after a heartbeat, she opens up her arms. Bruce lets himself be hugged, briefly, and returns it as much as he thinks he’s allowed. Neither of them is ready for more just yet. 

Still, this is… enough. More than enough. Some of the weight lifts from his heart, and he feels that for the second time this week, he’s on the path to being forgiven.

This is not the end for him, though. When Barbara lets him go, she tucks some of the wayward strands of hair behind her ear, glances briefly at Dick, and then turns back to Bruce with some of that determination bleeding back into her eyes. 

“There’s something else I want to do,” she says quietly. “Will you take me to the cave?”

Bruce nods, surprised. “Of course.”

Dick and Alfred don’t join them on the way down. Barbara doesn’t question it, and once again Bruce has the acute feeling of being ganged up on, and he has no idea what to make of it. They take the elevator down to the cave in silence, tension lingering between them still, even despite the hug. Bruce knows better than to hope that things would mend between them this quickly. For now, he’s relieved that they took the first step. 

Once down, Barbara makes straight for the computer without waiting for Bruce to help her. She stops by the controls and turns to face him, dim lights of the cave reflected in her glasses. 

And unbidden, the memory of when she was last here glares before Bruce’s eyes, Barbara standing tall and proud and fearsome in her very own suit, her legs strong and ready to carry her to fly over the rooftops. 

Barbara’s smile is small and fragile, and Bruce imagines she’s thinking about it, too.

“Let’s not,” she whispers. “I cried enough over it as it is. That time is over and that’s that.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce repeats, and she shakes her head, closing her eyes.

“Stop,” she commands. “Okay? I don’t want to do this. I didn’t come here so I could wallow in self-pity. I meant what I told the clown, Bruce. He may have taken away… a part of me, yes, a part that I loved, but… But there’s more to me than _that_. And this is what I want to show you.”

She turns to the computers without a further word. She enters the password Bruce uses, the only one with maximum clearance. And then she starts tearing her way through file after file, folder after folder, with a destination that, once Bruce realizes what she’s doing, becomes coldly, _frighteningly_ clear.

“Barbara…” Bruce tries.

She doesn’t turn. She keeps breezing through his security, going past encryption like it’s a set of riddles in a five-year-old’s coloring book. The clicks of the keyboard rattle off like gunshots into the cave, merciless, inevitable. Barbara only stops when she arrives at the one folder Bruce hoped no one would ever be able to uncover.

The one with the Joker tape.

“How did you do that,” Bruce breathes, though through the furious drumming of his heart he thinks he already knows the answer. 

“I told you,” Barbara says quietly, without turning around. “There’s more to me than that. I can do so much more than just be Batgirl. Dick went off and found his own identity separate from you, and… well, and so did I.”

Bruce can’t speak. His eyes burn, and heat blooms in his face, and he feels so goddamn _stupid_ he wishes he could travel back in time and grab himself by the shoulders and shake and shake and shake until he’d see sense. 

“You’re Oracle,” he manages.

“Yeah,” she says, her voice tinged with a bitter smirk. “Bravo, detective.”

Bruce’s throat wants to close up again. He comes up to stand next to Barbara, resting his hands on his hips. 

“Does Dick know?” he asks quietly. 

“He does. So does Alfred and Jason and a few others.”

“Clark?”

“Sure. You do realize that guy can see through walls, right?”

The urge to kick himself into oblivion only grows. He should have known. Jesus. 

“Dick and Jason lent me some money to get good equipment,” Barbara tells him softly. “Alfred helped too. They gave me access to your servers. So I guess you don’t have to worry, your security isn’t that shoddy to someone from the outside after all.”

When Bruce, far too overcome, says nothing, she touches his hand and says, “Don’t be mad at them. They were trying to help. And they did, tremendously. Without them I’d… I would never have gotten that far.”

“But you didn’t want to involve me,” Bruce whispers hollowly.

“No. And I think you understand why.”

“I do.” Bruce tries to get his voice under control, and looks at the folder on the screen. 

Barbara is silent for a moment. She says, “You always underestimated me. I gotta say, it felt good running circles around you for once, keeping you in the dark. I enjoyed it far too much.”

“And…” Bruce takes a breath, and manages to keep the sob in. “And this?”

“Yes.” Barbara sighs, slumping her shoulders, dropping her gaze. “Let’s talk about this, shall we? That one tape you keep locked up under layers and layers of passwords? You do realize what this looks like, right?”

“I —”

“Because to me it looks like you’re a middle schooler hiding his very first dirty mag under the bed,” she says, cutting, a challenge written all over her face. “And then you didn’t even _watch_ it.”

Bruce opens his mouth. He closes it. _Oh God._

“Did you?” he asks, voice trembling.

“Yes. Because I’m not _afraid_ , Bruce. Not of him. Not anymore, and certainly not of sex. I watched it, this and pretty much everything else, including the Arkham files. And you haven’t. If you had, you’d have gotten on the Arkham investigation much sooner and certain people would’ve already been out of jobs.”

“What?”

“Why haven’t you watched it, Bruce?” Barbara presses, glaring up at him. “What are you so afraid of?”

“Barbara —”

“You’ve seen him naked. Hell, you washed his hair for him, yeah, I’ve seen that. What is it about him being sexual that scares you so much?”

Bruce stares down at her. His mind is a blank scream. He grasps for words and stumbles, and finds only fear, and cold, cold sweat, and a heart that beats so hard and loud that it pushes out everything else. Barbara keeps the eye-contact relentlessly, never letting him back into a corner, and under her sharp gaze Bruce is flayed open, naked, everything wrong and dark and evil about him laid completely bare.

She can read the answer in his face. In his heart. She won’t be fooled.

Unlike Bruce, she doesn’t need to be.

“Watch it,” she tells him after the silence stretches too tight for either of them to endure. “If you’re serious about putting Arkham to rights, you will. And whatever it is you’re afraid of… well, maybe it’s time you face it. This stupid little game of yours has been going on for long enough. You owe him that, and you owe yourself, too. Denial won’t get you much further.” 

“Barbara…”

“Alfred will patch up a two-way link between us so you can contact me when you need me,” she says, slipping into a cold, impersonal tone, pushing away from the computer. “I’ll keep working on the Arkham case with Dick. He’ll drive me home now. My father doesn’t know so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t rat me out to him.”

She starts to make her way to the elevator. Bruce watches her, the chaos still unsettled, but he gets a grip on himself long enough to call out, “Tell me what you need. Equipment, computers, a workshop. I’ll pay for all of it and help you as much as I can.”

“Thanks, Bruce.” She turns and wheels herself backwards into the elevator. “This hasn’t been easy for me, I hope you appreciate that.”

“I do.” And before she can disappear, Bruce tells her again, “I really am sorry.”

She tries to smile, and doesn’t quite make it. Then, the elevator climbs up, taking her with it, and Bruce is left alone.

He looks up at the folder and licks his lips, still hesitating, still sweating, still feeling like his heart would fly out through his mouth if he only opened it a fraction.

He clicks play.

The recording starts from the beginning, the jumping on the bed, the whining, the near-panic attack. Bruce searches blindly for the chair as he watches it all play out all over again, and sits down heavily, nearly breathless with his own panic and the anxious anticipation. Knowing what’s coming doesn’t make it any easier, and if anything, from the way his hands are sweating, going through with it now probably isn’t a good idea.

He makes himself sit still anyway, and ignores the tremble in his fingers. _You can do this_ , he tells himself. He remembers the long, long hug he and Joker shared a few days ago, and he thinks, well, maybe Barbara was right about this. Maybe it’s really been too long, and maybe it’s time to face… whatever this is, whatever has been brewing in him all this time.

That doesn’t mean he’s any less terrified, and he almost pauses the recording again when Joker lays himself out on the bed and starts pressing his hand against the zipper. 

_No_ , he snaps at his own mind. _No. No more cowardice._

He peels his eyes to the screen and keeps his hands rigidly on the keyboard. 

On the screen, Joker is touching himself, the shirt falling open over his chest, fingers whispering over skin in a series of teasing touches that tantalize more than offer any genuine relief. His other hand, though, is pressing down hard over his crotch, rubbing slowly up and down the zipper, luxuriating in the pressure like he’s saying, _There’s no hurry, I can do this all night_. 

“Okay, you can stop that now,” one of the guards says, and Bruce recognizes Winston’s voice. 

“Stop? Now? Just as I’m getting started?” Joker bats his eyelashes, lifting his back off the bed so he can make a show of skimming his hand over his pants and down so he can cup his balls through the material. “I don’t think so, my darlings. Now you can watch or you can turn away, but either way, daddy’s gonna have some fun now.”

“We can electrocute you,” Winston threatens. 

“You can,” Joker agrees slyly, winking at the camera. “And then you’ll have to explain to the big bad Bat why you did it. And won’t you look like a pair of silly geese then!” 

He laughs, and it hitches when he squeezes through the material again. “Mmmmm,” he purrs, and stretches, his other hand coming up to comb through his hair. He closes his eyes, rubbing himself up and down through the fabric, back arching theatrically like he’s posing for an act. 

His pants aren’t even open yet and already it’s one of the most provocative, erotic displays Bruce has ever seen. The cold sweat is replaced with heat which gradually spills into his face and lower, and once again he wants to look away. 

But that’s out of the question now. Joker is slowly shifting so he can undo the zipper, and Bruce realizes he wouldn’t be able to look away now if an entire host of aliens crashed through the ceiling and started shooting up the place.

It’s not that Joker is _attractive_ as such, with his twig-like thinness and sharp angles all over, except that… well, he is. He _is_. And Bruce doesn’t know how he does it, but the fluid, sinuous movements, the low timbre of his voice, the way he shoots the camera heated looks from under his lashes… the confidence. The confidence most of all, the kind of open, uninhibited freedom Joker has with his own body that Bruce doesn’t think he could ever achieve. It’s alluring, nevermind how much Bruce doesn’t want it to be. 

And he cannot look away.

His throat goes dry when Joker lazily undoes the zipper. He can’t breathe when he sees the hardness tenting Joker’s underwear and the drop of moisture beading through the white cotton, and he has to swallow over sandpaper when Joker slowly pushes the underwear down his hips to allow for a pale, half-hard cock to spring free.

And then the world truly narrows down to this one screen, and this one cock, and the way Joker’s long fingers wrap around it with the ease and familiarity that are as alien to Bruce as the urge to do anything at all sexual for someone else’s viewing pleasure. But the cameras only seems to turn Joker on, and he poses for them as he gives himself a few light tugs, stretching on the bed, turning his head, his legs flexing and moving up and down. 

And then he kicks his pants and underwear off altogether, and shrugs off the shirt. The clothes slide to the floor. And Joker stays on the bed, pale, utterly exposed and completely unashamed, and lies down on his stomach with his legs spread so he can rub himself down into the sheets.

“Oh yeah,” he breathes, closing his eyes, sucking down hard on his lower lip. “Mmmmmmm, yes, this is nice. This is very nice. You got really nice quality bedsheets, Brucie dearest. Oh… excellent taste.”

His hips move up and down, undulating, a smooth, continuous movement that should be impossible for anyone who isn’t a gymnast or a contortionist. For a moment it makes Bruce think of Selina, except Joker isn’t nearly as graceful as she is. For all of Selina’s smooth curves, he has protruding lines of ribs and tight lean muscle; for her cat-like sway, he has turns and twists that are almost reptilian but still very human. That doesn’t mean he’s any less captivating, and Bruce finds himself staring at the steady rise and fall of his ass, two unnaturally white globes flexing as his legs spread in something that has to be a promise.

“They don’t have quality like that at Arkham,” Joker breathes with his eyes closed, a smile playing on his half-open mouth. He goes down, rubs himself against the sheets even as he massages his cock in a steady rhythm. “Ah… no, the sheets there are so coarse, it’s like fucking on one of those medieval hair shirts. And the bed bugs, don’t get me started on the bed bugs, ohhhhh… I managed anyway but this is much better, _so_ much better.”

He hums, letting go of his cock just so he can press down on the sheets with nothing in the way. 

And Bruce is hard. Dear God, he’s hard, so hard it hurts. His hands twitch on the keyboard in their urgency to give himself some relief. He keeps them put. He swallows, and keeps watching.

“Do you like the view, Batsy?” Joker asks one of the cameras, done with his humping for now and flipping himself on his back once again, cock now fully hard and leaking precum. “I wonder, do you ever think of me like that? Because I think of you. All the time. When I touch myself, and when I let other men fuck me, I always think of you, my sweet.” He giggles, and brings his left hand to his mouth, then sucks two fingers in. “Could really use some lube,” he muses out loud, grinning over the fingers. “Oh well. Not like I’m not used to doing this the hard way. Still, if Brucie could get me lube next time that’d be smashing…” 

Oh no. No, Bruce doesn’t think he can stand _that_. But on the screen Joker is entirely oblivious to his conflict and sucks hard on his fingers, and then spits into his hand for good measure to get as much lubrication as he can. 

And then his hand, inevitably, moves to his ass. And he’s lifting his hips off the bed. And he’s pushing the fingers in, both of them. 

His other hand flies to grip his cock hard and stroke it, fast now, probably to distract himself from the pain of entry. And Bruce… isn’t thinking anymore. Not when he’s so hard he cannot stand it, and he pushes through the guilt and the outrage to rest his hand on his own crotch to give himself _some_ relief, because he can already tell he won’t be able to will this one away. 

For a moment, Joker is silent, moaning quietly through his teeth as he eases the fingers in knuckle by knuckle, tugging on his cock, smearing the precome down the shaft to make it easier. Then both his fingers are in as far as they will go, and he keeps them in place for a few seconds before he starts moving his hand to the sides, his hips circling, undulating, searching for an angle. 

“Oh!” he gasps finally, eyes snapping open, and he laughs breezily, and pushes his hips down onto his hand. “That’s nice,” he breathes, giggling, “that is very nice. I do love this, Batsy, I love this a lot. Even better when it’s a nice thick cock, but I’ll take what I can get… mmmmm, I bet your cock is big, darling. Isn’t it? Thick and long and so, so delicious. I like to think about it when —” he cuts himself off with a gasp as his fingers ease out and then in again, sharper, faster. “You probably get the picture,” he chuckles, and yes, he is absolutely right, Bruce does get the picture. He gets many pictures, most of them of Joker in his cell at Arkham masturbating to the thoughts of Batman, and that’s too much. It’s — it’s way too much. Bruce never stood a chance. 

He opens his own pants roughly and nudges the underwear out of the way, and the relief of touching himself _finally_ squeezes a rough, loud sigh out of him. It rises to be captured by the chill of the cave and Bruce is temporarily embarrassed, but there’s no one here. Barbara and Dick are long gone, Jason left in the morning and Alfred probably won’t be coming down here until he thinks it’s time to tell Bruce off for not eating properly. He’s alone, and he can…

His hand starts moving over his cock in time with Joker. One, two, three. One, two, three.

And on the screen…

“Andy’s dick was okay, I suppose,” Joker rambles in a light isn’t-the-weather-nice-today tone, fingers moving in and out of his ass leisurely now, hand still sliding over his cock. “Not the best I’ve had but he made up for it with that he liked to play rough. He hated me, you see. He thought fucking me in the broom closet was somehow humiliating me. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that actually it was the other way around, the poor dear…” His breath hitches as his hips stutter; he must have hit on an especially good angle. Bruce whines through his teeth, hating himself for the way his own cock jerks in response even as Lautner’s sullen face blinks in front of his vision. 

“Billy, now, Billy was good,” Joker breathes after a moment, regaining equilibrium even as his face gets flushed. “Poor, dear old Billy. _He_ was in love with me. I don’t always take my henchmen to bed but he was so obvious about it, I decided to have some fun with the poor kid. And it _was_ fun. He was just big enough to drill me into the mattress, just how I like it, and he made a nice cuddle pillow. Proper big cock, too. Such a shame that he got so clingy in the end that I had to get rid of him, but oh well, _c’est la vie_ , eh, Bats? And I was always thinking of you anyway. Ha!” He spreads his legs wider, plants them firmly on the bed. White fingers disappearing into equally white flesh. Slender white cock nestled in a patch of wiry green hair. A breathless smile slick with pleasure, flush fighting into a pale face, eyes hazy with arousal.

And Bruce is seeing red. He is imagining Joker spreading himself like that for other men, big, burly, thuggish men with Lautner’s face, taking his pleasure from them however he wants, and when the sharp pang of familiar fury mixes with the thick sluice of arousal he can no longer keep pace with Joker’s measured rhythm.

“Are you jealous, my love?” Joker asks, somehow managing to read Bruce’s mind even from a months’ old recording. “Do you want to hear about the others? All the other men I used to stand in for you? There weren’t all that many, you know. I can only play with them so much before it becomes… ahhhhhh… depressing. But I had some fun… mmmmmmm, yes, yes, I had. Fun…” He closes his eyes and sighs, loudly, and takes another break from monologuing to pleasure himself more forcefully, more quickly. His head turns to the side, teeth biting into his lower lip. Sweat gleams on his body and soaks into the sheets.

And then Bruce doesn’t know anymore if it’s performance or genuine abandon, because he can see both in Joker, the showmanship alongside sensual urgency. His own hand flies over his cock in a frantic pace, almost mechanical, the release important only because Bruce knows he won’t be able to think clearly again until he reaches it. Joker isn’t talking anymore and now the cave echoes with both their voices, Bruce’s strangled grunts and Joker’s soft moans, until Bruce can feel himself tipping over the edge and comes into his hand, hard, eyes firmly on Joker’s body, the relief like a rush of black-out that has him slumping boneless in the chair. 

… God. _God_.

On the screen, it looks like Joker will join him soon; his own pace is picking up, and his writhing becomes less studied and more natural. He gasps, opens his eyes to pierce the closest camera with a gaze so bright and fevered with desire Bruce’s spent cock responds by twitching in his hand. 

“This is for you, Batsy,” Joker whispers, so hoarse and breathy. “It’s all for you.” 

His back arches. His fingers plunge in deep, and his buttocks clench tight around them. He moans as he works his cock to orgasm, gripping tight, using the thick drops of cum to slick the way as he rubs himself through the pleasure.

It takes him a while to come down from it. He takes his time pulling the fingers out of his ass, and then he lies there breathing deeply, as spent and boneless as Bruce is, except obviously Joker is free of the guilt, shame and self-loathing that crowd in Bruce’s head.

And oh, Bruce envies him that. He really, really does.

“Congratulations,” Joker whispers over a lazy smile when he finally opens his eyes. “You are now one of the handful of people who have seen me come entirely without violence. Not even dear old Dr. Lancer can lay claim to that.” Joker’s giggle is bitter, sharp, and Bruce’s mind snaps into painful focus. “Though he tried, the old goat, did he try… He likes to watch, see? He likes to… yeah. Ha, maybe you should send him this tape. On the other hand, darling, don’t. I don’t want him to see this. He doesn’t…” Joker sighs deeply, covering his eyes with his forearm. “He doesn’t deserve it,” he whispers hoarsely, and the humor is wiped clean from his voice.

He lies there in silence for a few minutes, forearm slung over his face. He doesn’t move, and only his toes twitch as he flexes them. 

And then he starts singing.

“I wanna be loved by you, just you, and nobody else but you. I wanna be loved by you alone… boop-boop-bee-doo!” He makes himself move, pushes off the bed. He stands, still humming, and slowly pads to the bathroom. His voice carries shakily, soft, with breathy pauses, “I wanna be kissed by you, just you, and nobody else but you… I wanna be kissed by you alone…!”

The shower starts. Joker stands under the spray unmoving for a moment, humming quietly, his eyes closed as the water trickles down his face. 

And Bruce watches him, and thinks, _I’m doomed._

The chill of the cave curls against his sensitive cock. He doesn’t have tissues on hand to wipe himself clean, so he has to stand up and get to the cave showers, where he grabs a towel and briefly washes himself, his hands moving mechanically without consultation with his brain. 

His brain is too full of Joker for that, and when he returns to the computers, he is just about ready to collapse and cry.

… Jesus, what the fuck is he doing.

He sits there, spent, tired and not entirely there, long after the recording blinks out into darkness.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the hardest chapter I've written for this story so far - I honestly can't tell you how often it's been rewritten and generally tinkered with. I'm still not quite happy with the present draft. It's also hella heavy and angsty and maybe this is why I've been having so much trouble with it, but it's a very necessary transition where I kinda have to hold Bruce's hand as he processes what he learned about himself at the end of chapter 8. Hopefully you'll be able to stomach it, and I think we can expect some lighter stuff again after this, and maybe even - gasp - some sort of resolution? Who knows? I don't. 
> 
> There's a scene in this chapter featuring an OC Joker henchman - it's a character that we came up with with my brainstorming friend Mitzvah, and honestly, I love him. I didn't want to use any pre-existing canon henchmen because of the associations they'd invoke, so I decided an OC would probably work best in this situation. That scene also has mentions of implied rape, so be careful about that.
> 
> Now, news! I am a very, VERY lucky author with the best readers ever, and I honestly can't express how happy I am that you guys keep surprising me with wonderful works inspired by this story. Please check out this [gorgeous illustration of the hug from chapter 8](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/147989324913/ive-been-mistreated-you-giant-stubborn) by ive-been-mistreated - isn't it stunning? And ontarom absolutely floored me by sharing [these amazing storyboards based on the boys' first movie date](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/148553414123/ontarom-i-used-to-love-storyboarding-so-i-thought), honestly, I'm still screaming. Also, the story inspired these [beautiful sketches](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/148553478058/name-unknown-1801-batjokes-again) by name-unknown-1801 - thank you so, so much, I just, *flailing* 
> 
> As always many thanks to Mitzvah who is a great brainstorming partner. 
> 
> So. Let's dive in, shall we?

Dick finds him still hunched in the chair, bathed in a pool of too-bright, sterile light from the screens. 

It takes a while for either of them to speak.

“So.” Dick waits a beat.

Bruce keeps his head down and doesn’t accept the invitation to begin the conversation. There’s nothing to say. Or maybe, there’s plenty, there’s _too much_ , and he doesn’t — he _can’t_ — 

“Babs really is something else, isn’t she,” Dick offers after a moment, and Bruce lets out a breath.

“Yes,” he agrees, “she is.”

“Are you…” Dick clears his throat. “Are you mad at us?”

“Mad?” Bruce blinks. The question is so far removed from the turmoil currently eating him up that he needs to take a moment to process what Dick means. He whispers, “No. No, I’m not… mad.”

“Ohhh-kay. So then… I don’t have to apologize for keeping you in the dark about Oracle?”

Once again, Bruce takes a few seconds to figure out a way to verbalize what he feels. Catching that thread through the blizzard of what he’s still processing about himself and Joker is… difficult. He settles on, “I’m glad you all were there for her. She can rely on you. I… She can’t rely on _me_ , so… at least there’s…”

His throat seizes up, and the words crash against it in a pile, halfway out.

Dick watches him without a word. After a moment he steps closer, leaning back against the computer so he’s facing Bruce’s chair, folding his arms over his chest, looking down at Bruce. 

“She doesn’t exactly _need_ any of us, you know,” he says eventually. “Not you, not me, not… yeah. That’s the thing. She would have worked out how to do this Oracle thing on her own even if we hadn’t helped her out. She’s just — strong like that.”

“I know.” Bruce swallows. “And I’m… proud of her.”

“Wow.” Dick cracks him half a smile, dry, restrained. “So that word actually _is_ in your vocabulary! Who’d’ve thunk?” He claps, and then stops when Bruce doesn’t react. He clears his throat. “You know, she could stand to hear that from you personally.”

“Could she?” Bruce finally raises his head to him, looking up at his son for what feels like the first time in their lives. “I’m not so sure.” 

But no, that’s not quite it. He is sure. Pretty damn sure he has forfeited the right to tell Barbara anything of the sort. 

“That’s for you two to work out,” Dick tells him, shrugging. “I’m not going to speak for her. But, you know… because you have the clown in here, she’s been able to watch him, too. And I can tell it’s actually made a difference. Maybe not a huge one, but she’s seen the… low points. And I think she’s starting to accept that the guy really is sick… in the medical sense, I mean. Honestly I don’t know if that makes what he did to her better or worse, but it’s… there.” 

Bruce nods, because that’s all he can bring himself to do. His throat is still much too congested, and he isn’t sure he could even say the name Joker out loud.

 _I’ve failed her_ , he thinks, _I’ve failed all of you._

Memory of pleasure, too close, too raw, still tingles, still threatens to coax all of the heat back out. Bruce looks away from Dick. He can’t stand to meet his son’s eyes, not when he was sitting here with his cock out, touching himself frantically to the images of the Joker not two hours ago. 

_Jesus_. What he’s done. How he felt, and in a way still does. What it means, for him and Joker and, by extension, for his entire family… It’s been well over an hour and he still can’t bring himself to articulate any of it. All those months, all the… longing, the urges, the conflicts that he worked so hard to keep bottled up. All of that — spilled all over the floor of the cave. Squeezed out of him with that one orgasm, because now, now that he let it happen, now that he felt his own come dripping over his hand, he can no longer deny any of it. It’s out. It’s done. His deniability, gone, burnt to a crisp, his feelings laid bare, and it feels like they’re written all over his face, his hands, his body. The shame, the… transgression. 

The fall.

His family — do they know? Do they suspect? Barbara must, but Dick, and Jason… Alfred… How on Earth…

And then Dick asks, “So, did you watch the tape?”

Bruce can’t speak. He presses both hands to his face and breathes.

“Okay, I guess that’s a yes.” Dick is quiet for a moment before he prompts, “Was it really that bad? ‘Cause I haven’t seen it. I only know from Babs that it exists and frankly, my life would be so much happier without even that bit of info.”

“Dick,” Bruce begs, “not now. Please. I need to… think.”

Dick sighs. “See, Bruce, I really, really want to believe you. I would _love_ to just drop it and get on with stuff like everything’s normal and let you brood this one out like you do everything else.” As if to telegraph his point, he pushes himself up to perch on the computer console, settling in. Obviously whatever he’s come here to say is going to take a while, and Bruce barely stops himself from snapping at him. “I know you don’t want to talk about it. I don’t either,” Dick asserts, swinging a leg, kicking Bruce’s chair. “But the thing is, you’ve been left alone to think about things for far too long and by now it’s safe to say it’s not working out all that great for you, and so, Babs and I agree that it’s time for… an intervention.”

Bruce’s fingers dig circles into the skin of his forehead, hard. He wants to get out of here. He needs to. “I don’t need an intervention,” he protests roughly, but Dick is having none of it. 

“Oh no?” he challenges. “That why you’re practically crawling into a fetal position in your chair after you watched a clown rub one out?”

He kicks the chair again. It jerks, and Bruce’s head jerks up with it. 

“Dick,” he warns.

“You’re doing the voice at me.” Dick’s smile is incredulous, theatrically so, and just a little sad at the corners. “I can’t believe you’d actually do the voice at me. Bruce, I’m only trying to help.”

“Don’t. None of this concerns you,” Bruce growls, and indeed, feels himself slip into the Batman mindframe, wishing for his suit, for his cowl, for any sort of armor whatsoever and feeling naked, naked, naked.

“It does, actually,” Dick counters with calm that only serves to fuel Bruce’s spiking defensiveness. “I’m your adopted son, remember? Just because I flew the coop doesn’t mean I no longer care. Besides, I’m on the case now. I even dyed my hair blond even though it totally clashes with my complexion. If that’s not commitment I don’t know what is.” 

Bruce tries to stand up. Dick is faster, and traps him there by planting his feet on Bruce’s thighs. 

“Oh no,” he says, “no you don’t. We’re going to have a heart-to-heart right now and you’re going to sit through it like a good bat or I swear to God I _will_ cuff you to that chair.” He pats the Arkham issue handcuffs hanging from his uniform belt.

“Are you threatening me?”

“Yeah, I guess I am. Whatcha gonna do about it, old man?”

They stare each other down as a fight crackles in the air. 

And the scary thing is, for a moment, Bruce actually considers following through. If he had his suit on that’s probably what would happen. He _wants_ to fight, he wants to kick and punch and hurt and be hurt until the memory of Joker and his own pleasure is pummeled out of him, and maybe it would even bring relief, however temporary. It’s _tempting_. The Batman in him urges him to shove Dick’s feet off, to lunge and go for it. It’d be so much easier. His muscles tense, and he calculates…

But this is Dick. This is _Dick_. He can’t fight _Dick_. He can’t use his son as one of those anti-stress sand balls Alfred ordered for Joker and sneaked into Bruce’s own bedroom. It doesn’t matter that Dick is a good fighter and could hold his own, he just — he can’t.

Dick must read the surrender in his face — the tension in his feet releases at the same time as Bruce forces his own muscles to unclench. He still keeps them on Bruce’s thighs, probably expecting a trick, and for a moment, Bruce is almost proud. 

Or would be, if he had any room for that underneath the cold, cold claustrophobia. 

“Come on, Bruce,” Dick coaxes, gently. “You know we’d have to have this conversation at _some_ point.”

Bruce looks away. He bites the inside of his cheek before he can stop himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah you do. And I think it’s time. So I’m just gonna… I’m gonna come out and ask the big one now, okay? So we can get that out of the way and focus on solutions. So…” He pauses despite his own announcement, and for a moment he looks almost as uncomfortable with this situation as Bruce. But then he meets Bruce’s eyes again, and his expression settles into something altogether too tight, and he asks, “Are you attracted to the Joker?”

Bruce’s heart stops. So, it feels, does time itself. He stares into his son’s bright, earnest eyes, and works his throat while every single drop of blood drains away from his face.

They hold each other’s eyes. 

And behind Dick, on the biggest screen, the folder with Joker’s recording looms over them both and burns into Bruce as if to say, in Joker’s voice, _Go on, try to deny it, I dare you._

He _wants_ to try. He goes as far as to open his mouth. But the words refuse to line up, and are scrambled every which way by the memories — the recording, the hug, Bruce’s own inability to stay away. His fingers, gentle in Joker’s wet hair. Their heartbeats joined in a single rhythm, _one two three._

Dick is watching him, and his face begins to soften, some of the tightness easing into cleaner, plainer sadness.

He is the first to look away. One foot drops from Bruce’s thigh to swing and kick against the frame of the computer.

“You know, I think I’ve come to know him pretty well over the years,” he says, the corner of his mouth quirking up as though he’s fractionally amused by the memories. “Probably better than Gordon does. I know you tend to forget that, that you consider yourself the big clown expert, and you are, but I’ve been there for most of your spats. If I had a dollar for every time I got kidnapped and held hostage by him I wouldn’t need your trust fund to get into college.” The smile spills into the other corner of his mouth now, fragile, more delicate and breakable than Alfred’s favorite china. “And one of the things I remember? You two used to have _fun_. Not just him — both of you. Don’t deny it. Back then, when we fought him, I saw you come alive like you rarely do for anything else. You smiled more, you bantered, he flirted and you flirted right back. For a while, when all he did was those ridiculous wacky robberies with giant vacuums or, I don’t know, pogo sticks and stuff, when he left you clues and you chased him around like a pair of kids on a playground, you’d always tell me to take care of the henchmen, but the Joker was yours. Always yours. And that’s what he wanted, too — I never really mattered, it was all you, you, you. Like it was just a great big game, and Bruce, you used to _love_ playing along.” 

Dick falls silent, and when he raises his eyes to Bruce again, they shine with more than just determination, and Bruce’s heart twists. “You know what else I remember?” he picks up, smile trembling for just a blink. “Whenever he kidnapped me there’d be the waiting, when we both held our breaths waiting for you to drop through the window. I loved those moments, I honestly thought there could never be anything quite so kickass. And when I look back at all that, I think that’s what _he_ thought, too. That all those pranks and crimes and kidnappings were so he could watch you at your best, to give you a chance to show off just a little bit, and I kinda think you _did_ show off. I used to think it was for my benefit, to show the kid how cool it was to be Batman’s sidekick. Now, I… I’m not so sure anymore.” 

Bruce swallows, again. The fingernails of his right hand rake hard over the palm of his left, leaving angry red tracks. He whispers, “That was a long time ago.”

“Yeah. I know. They put him in Arkham and everything changed.” The smile is gone, replaced by a sadness that Bruce feels his own face mirroring. “The thing is, though, the game may have changed, but your commitment to it never did. He was always on top of your list. One way or another. The city, then him. Didn’t occur to me to be jealous of that back then, I was just a kid and I didn’t understand, but still, there were moments when I…” He shakes his head, looking away, smirking with more than a touch of bitterness. “Anyway,” he breathes out, “there’ll be time to air all _that_ later. What I’m trying to say is, I’ve been thinking about the good old days a lot recently, probably because watching you two interact, it’s kind of… not similar, exactly, but it’s made me understand some things a whole lot better. And the moment it really clicked for me, I think, was when I watched you and him out in the gardens. When you put the flowers in his hair, and the way you two looked at one another. I don’t think anyone else really noticed, but I did. And now… in a weird way… I guess it all makes sense.”

“Dick…” Bruce tries. Dick shakes his head again, and lightly kicks at Bruce’s knee. 

“I’m not outraged,” he says earnestly. “Hell, I’m not even surprised. Like I said, I’ve been watching it build for ages, it’s just that, it’s only now that I actually understand. I don’t think Barbara does, or Jason. They still hope it’s just some sort of, I don’t know, physical attraction, that you can still shake it off if you just confront it and work your way past it, kinda like you did with Selina. But they haven’t watched you two all these years. They haven’t been there. I have, and… well, I know it’s not that easy.”

He falls silent. It’s not expectant, doesn’t feel like he needs Bruce to fill the space between them with his own words, which is a good thing because Bruce doesn’t have any. He doesn’t think he’d be able to force out so much as a “yes” now. 

He blinks, and his eyes feel wet.

“Am I wrong, Bruce?” Dick asks softly. Both his feet have found their way back on Bruce’s thighs.

Bruce’s throat contracts. He drops his gaze down to Dick’s feet, and they swim, and he thinks the wetness is leaking through but he can’t be sure. He hopes not. The last thing he needs is for Dick to see him cry.

“Bruce?”

Dick’s voice is gentle. And somehow that makes it even harder. If he’d been mad, if he’d raged, lashed out, called Bruce disgusting, Bruce might have been able to retreat behind the familiarity of his walls and press right back. But as it is, the quiet, sad _acceptance_ leaves no room for walls. No room for aggression. Only honesty, however raw and uncomfortable it might be, and from that, there is no escape. 

Barbara said, _You owe him that, and you owe yourself, too_. And she might have been right about that, but it’s not the whole truth, is it? Because it’s not just the two of them anymore. Bruce has a family now and he owes them, too. 

Dick is still looking at him. He doesn’t move his feet, and the message is transparent: _You’re not going to lose me over this._

And that, perhaps more than anything else, stops any words Bruce might pick up from ever getting out, because God, Dick is too good for him and Bruce doesn’t deserve him. Not his acceptance, not his support, not his love, he just — he doesn’t deserve any of it, hasn’t _earned_ it, and yet, he knows that he wouldn’t be able to do without them, and isn’t that just a goddamn mess?

Still, for Dick’s support alone if nothing else, he really owes him the truth.

And so, he breathes out. 

And he shakes his head. 

“Right,” Dick says after a long, long time. His feet don’t move. “Right. Okay. That’s… better, isn’t it? Doesn’t that feel better?”

Bruce shakes his head again, and Dick sighs.

“Yeah, fine. All right. It’s a can of worms. But at least you admitted it. Which means we can start on what comes next.”

Bruce blinks, and brings his hands up to catch whatever might leak out. 

Nothing does, so far. He’s still keeping the tears in. But it’s only a matter of time, and that only makes the sting in his eyes worse.

“Bruce?” Dick kicks lightly against his leg. “Hey, are you… okay?”

Bruce’s breath shudders, and he whispers the first thing that lines up to force its way out of his throat: “How can you even look at me?”

Dick freezes. “What?”

“He’s a murderer,” Bruce chokes out, just as the truth of it, of the hell he’s tumbled into at full speed without even knowing when or how, finally releases over him. “A murderer. And I —”

This time when he blinks there is no holding back the tears.

“I failed,” he whispers. “All of you, everyone… I failed, and I can’t — I can’t —” 

He can’t be Batman anymore. Batman cannot love a murderer. He cannot allow himself to be broken like that. If he does, if he _did_ , then he’s unfit to protect his city, unfit to wear the cowl, unfit — 

— to honor the memory of his parents. How can he, if he’s in love with one of the monsters that killed them? Joker may not have been the one to pull the trigger on them, but he has done so on countless others, and he is of the same breed, the same wild, ruthless, merciless breed that sees no value in human life and is willing to step on it like it’s nothing, like it’s dirt, like it’s a _joke_ — 

Cold shivers break out all over Bruce’s skin when he imagines his mother and father looking down at him, much like Dick is doing now. Only their faces aren’t painted with concern, but disgust. With anger, disappointment, rejection. And they turn their heads away, and whisper, _Traitor._

 _I’m sorry_ , he pleads, _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I never meant…_

That’s when a hand rests on top of his head, and through the burn in his throat he realizes that he’s been repeating that out loud. 

“Bruce,” Dick whispers, and he’s standing over him, putting his other hand on Bruce’s shoulder. 

Bruce doesn’t turn towards him, but, selfishly, he doesn’t shake off Dick’s hands either. They’re cold — they remind him where he is, what is real. He bends, pressing his hands to his face again. He tries to breathe. The tears keep flowing, and he doesn’t know how to hold them back but he tries all the same because focusing on that is so much easier than acknowledging the fact that his world has all but crumbled into ruin.

Everything he thought he knew about himself. Everything that’s been holding him up. Undone, ground into fine dust by the grin on a painted face and the feel of white skin and the smell of citrus. And the worst thing is, he thinks — no, he knows, that Dick is right, that he’s been building this up inside himself for a long, long time. 

Oh, Joker would love that. How he would laugh, if he only knew. If he could only see Bruce right now, see what he’s reduced him to, he would laugh himself raw. And Bruce wants to punch him for that until the imaginary laughter turns to bloody gurgles, except he can’t because none of this is Joker’s fault. 

It’s Bruce’s. It’s Batman’s. If he hadn’t tried to break the cycle, if he hadn’t put them on this trajectory in the first place, starting with the time he came to visit Joker in his cell to talk about their fates…

… They’d probably end up dead. They _would_ end up killing each other, sooner or later, like he predicted that fateful night. Remembering that, why he’d reached out in the first place… helps, but only just barely. 

_I don’t quite understand why ours should be such a fatal relationship_ , Bruce had said, then, a whole lifetime ago, and now the words make him want to laugh. It should have been obvious, really. He should have seen it much sooner. But their dance had been so familiar, so comfortable in its regular beats, that it had given him all the excuses he needed to just keep on going like a racehorse, along the predetermined track, the blinders firmly in place. 

Well, looks like he doesn’t have that luxury anymore. The track is derailed, the blinders are off. And finally he sees what’s been building around them both, all this time — a raging fire. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and Dick’s hand smoothes over his hair.

“What I said about Barbara,” he says slowly, quietly, squeezing Bruce’s shoulder. “About how she realized that the Joker had actual medical issues? That goes for me, too. I’ve always known in this abstract way, like, oh, sure he’s insane, but I guess it wasn’t until I saw him function from day to day here in the Manor that I actually understood what it meant. It’s been… an education, that’s for sure.”

Bruce shakes his head. “I can’t afford to turn a blind eye,” he insists. “Barbara… Jim… all the people he murdered…”

“No, of course not. Sure. I’m not asking you to. Hell, _I’ll_ never forgive him for any of that either, and to be honest I’m going to need a long, long shower after playing devil’s advocate for the guy.” Dick is silent for a moment, thinking, never stepping away from Bruce, and then he says, “Okay, let me ask you a question. Say some grieving parent files a case against the Joker with the state and they decide, fine, let’s do this. What if they hire a really good prosecutor and have them prove to the jury’s satisfaction that the Joker is actually competent to stand trial and thus must be held responsible for his crimes. He can be pretty damn rational when he wants to, he can pass for sane, and they could use that against him. And the jury says, he’s guilty because of course he is, and so the state sentences him to the chair. Would you just stand by and let it happen?”

Bruce tenses. “You know I wouldn’t,” he manages, “but —”

“Exactly. Because he _is_ ill. And despite that, he’s stayed put for almost two years now, first in Arkham and now here, because of you. Because you asked him to. Because you reached out to him — right after what he did to Babs and Gordon, might I add, which honestly should have clued everyone in, you most of all. Because you saw some sort of potential where no one else did. And it’s paying off, but Bruce, you _have_ to accept, he’s not doing any of it for himself or because he’s seen the error of his ways. He’s doing it for you. All of it, it’s for you, and you have the power to keep him on this track, just — all I ask is that you do it responsibly, and that you let yourself make the same allowances for him that you expect from others.”

“You don’t understand,” Bruce insists. “The fact that I would… that I could feel anything at all for him…”

“Would loving him stop you from bringing him to justice if he broke out and did something awful?”

Bruce pauses and thinks about it. Would it? He _wants_ to believe that it wouldn’t, but the thing is, he can’t be sure. He can’t be sure of anything about himself anymore. 

“You’re overthinking it again,” Dick comments when Bruce takes too long to answer. “I think it wouldn’t stop you. You turned a blind eye on Catwoman sometimes but that’s because she was never a murderer and her crimes tend to mostly upset rich old pricks who have way too much money anyway. And you still hauled her ass to jail when she did something too big and blatant and harmful. Having a fling with _her_ never stopped you from being Batman. I don’t think it’d be too different this time. When push comes to shove you can be hell-bent on going against your own self-interest… infuriatingly so.” 

“What are you saying,” Bruce asks as his eyes slowly clear and the tears finally seem to stop coming, “that I should actually… act on…”

To finish the sentence is unthinkable and perhaps Dick thinks so too, because quickly, he says, “Look, I’m not telling you to do anything. I’m just trying to… help you put things in perspective, before your brain blows this whole thing out of proportion. Though I see it’s probably too late for that.”

Bruce wants to protest. He’s not _over_ thinking anything, he’s doing the precise amount of thinking required to the situation. He opens his mouth to tell Dick just that, and finally raises his head to face him, and looks into Dick’s bright eyes… 

_He’s seeing your tears_ , he realizes. _You’re letting your son see your tears, and he’s going to carry that image with him for the rest of his life._

Of Bruce, being weak and leaning on _him_ for support. 

And suddenly, all he knows for sure is that he can’t let that go on. Whatever else might be at stake right now, he can’t let his _child_ be his crutch. Dick doesn’t deserve that kind of weight — no one does. It’s Bruce’s to carry, for better or worse. 

The resolution helps reorder his mind somewhat, and the worst of the panic retreats grudgingly to the corner of his mind from which it will no doubt spring again once Bruce is alone. For now, he has to be stronger than this. He has to be the man Dick had for the longest time thought him to be. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and though his voice isn’t strong, exactly, it doesn’t waver either. “You shouldn’t have seen that.”

Dick’s face crumples. He takes his hands away. 

“Come on,” he tries. “It’s not —”

“No.” Bruce wipes his face again, and this time, when he sits back, he manages to reassert some semblance of control over his own body and mind. “I really am sorry. This is my problem to deal with.”

“We’re family,” Dick protests.

Bruce looks into his eyes.

“Exactly,” he says, “and I’m supposed to be your guardian. You may be grown up now but it shouldn’t be your responsibility to babysit me. It should be the other way around. I can’t let you carry any of that weight for me and I’m sorry that I did.”

Dick looks uncomfortable now, and takes a step back as though Bruce has physically pushed him away. “You can’t be strong all the time,” he argues. “Even you. You’re going through some fucked up stuff. It’s okay to need help.”

“Maybe,” Bruce allows with some difficulty, “but you shouldn’t be the one to provide it.”

“We’re family,” Dick repeats. “We’re here for you. Don’t shut us out again. I’m not going to leave over this, so… so don’t… make me, okay?”

Bruce stands up and tries to read his face, and is taken aback by how difficult the task turns out to be. He’s never had any real trouble with that — Dick has always worn his heart on his sleeve, or at least Bruce had thought so up until now. Maybe because he accepted what Dick projected at face value and never thought — never bothered — to look deeper, and doesn’t that just prove how much he’s failed the kid already?

It’s that, more than anything, that makes him say, “That’s not what I’m doing. I’m just — I’m trying to be responsible. For once.”

Now it’s Dick’s turn to look away, and he does so almost awkwardly, rubbing his shoulder much like he did when he was twelve and had just broken a crystal wineglass trying to help Alfred with the dishes. Bruce’s heart hurts for him, and he takes a step closer. 

Dick doesn’t retreat. He doesn’t move at all. More than anything else, he is now telegraphing disappointment, and suddenly Bruce is struck with the thought that maybe Dick _enjoyed_ seeing him fall apart. Being the stronger one, for once. Finding Bruce at his most vulnerable and being the one to pick up the pieces, being the mature one, the _adult_ , turning the tables. 

It’s a petty, ugly thought and Bruce hates himself for it instantly. That doesn’t stop it from taking root.

 _You’re no longer on the pedestal and haven’t been for a long time_ , he tell himself. _You have no one to blame but yourself._ He’s made far too many mistakes, with Dick and then with Jason and Barbara, and Selina… Far, far too many. 

Even so, he can’t let Dick carry him. No one deserves that, and certainly not the little boy Bruce took in to make his life just a little bit easier — not even if that’s what Dick thinks he wants. 

“I appreciate your help,” Bruce says slowly, every word a struggle. “I’ll… think about what you said.”

“Yeah, you do that.” Dick still hasn’t looked up. “Do you… do you want to keep talking? Because there’s a lot. And I mean a lot. To get through.”

Bruce takes a deep breath. “No. I think we’re done here.”

“So what are you going to do?” Dick blurts out, like he’s unable to stop himself. “You’re going to keep seeing him? Are you just going to ignore the, uh… tension?”

Good question. What _is_ he going to do? 

“We’re on a case,” Bruce decides. “I’m going to keep investigating. So will you. Everything else…” He closes his eyes for a moment, steadying himself. He can do this. He’s got this far. “Everything else will have to wait.”

“I don’t think you should keep investigating, actually,” Dick judges quietly. “You’re not exactly a neutral party. You’re too invested. Your judgment —”

“Enough,” Bruce tells him, decisively. “I do appreciate your words and your… support. Despite everything. I don’t think I deserve it, but I… appreciate it. Nevertheless, I’ll keep working the case until I can put all the perpetrators behind bars and that’s that.”

“You still haven’t told him what you’re doing.”

“No. I don’t want to upset —”

“Coward.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” Dick challenges, finally meeting Bruce’s eyes again. “I think you’re afraid to tell him. You’re afraid of how he’ll react, and how _you_ will react to knowing the truth about how they hurt him.”

“I don’t know if they have,” Bruce counters, defensiveness pushing through again. “Carter said Joker was known to try and seduce the guards. There may have been no… assault.”

“You don’t believe that, I know you don’t. It doesn’t add up. And he has the right to know.”

Bruce turns away. “Enough.” He starts towards the suit storage, leaving Dick in the square of light from the computer.

He may not be worthy enough to wear the suit anymore — perhaps he never was — but he has one more job to finish. He will see it through, however long it might take, and after that… 

He starts to change, and thinks, in the end, the city will tell him what to do. It always has. 

“Where are you going?” Dick calls after him. 

Bruce hesitates. The cowl glares at him from his hands, and he stares at it, working his throat, before he finally fits it over his head. 

Nothing happens. The cave doesn’t collapse. The bats don’t take flight in a flurry of anger and disdain. The heavens don’t part to strike him down and call him an usurper. 

It’s just — heavy. Perhaps a little heavier than it’s always been, this time. A touch tighter, where it bites into the skin of his face. 

Bruce breathes out, and feels the Batman crawling over him with the touch of kevlar.

“Blackgate,” he tells Dick, reaching for the cape. 

“Why the hell would you —”

“You should try to see if any of the inmates or other employees would be willing to give testimonies.”

“Yeah, I’m working on that,” Dick says, sighing. “Cindy and a few others are almost ready to talk, I think. So’s Dr. Quinzel.”

“Good. We’re getting closer.” 

“Except all we have on some of those bastards is hearsay and vague insinuations from the clown,” Dick points out. “We know he likes to mess with his psychologists. Don’t — don’t fly off the handle just yet.”

Bruce glares at him, stalking towards the car. “I wasn’t planning to.” 

“Right. Right. Want me to go get Jason?”

“No.”

When he gets into the car, Dick doesn’t try to stop him.

 

***

 

They’ve learned to not ask the Batman too many questions at Blackgate. When he says he needs to interrogate an inmate they only ask which one, and then they lead him to the the private interrogation room, where he waits in the shadowed corner until they bring in his first prey for the night: Dmitri “Sweet Tooth” Nikolaevich Barashkov, aged 37, ex-henchman of the Joker, imprisoned for life.

Bruce has read up on this one before and knows that Dmitri emigrated from Russia for reasons unknown when he was a teenager, and worked odd jobs at the Gotham docks before the always-greedy underworld finally snatched him up. His criminal record includes anything from shoplifting to grand theft auto to murder, and he worked for the Maroni family before he deserted them for the Joker. This is how Bruce remembers him best: the cold, silent bulk of a shadow looming huge and threatening behind the clown, not the sharpest switchblade in the pocket but reliable, fast with the trigger and — most important of all — loyal to a fault. That’s one of the reasons Bruce wants to talk to him.

The other is that during the man’s many trials, it has been determined that Dmitri is rather… slow on the uptake. The appointed court psychologist has diagnosed him with a cognitive learning deficiency — surprising most, since the Joker isn’t exactly known for his patience with the mooks — and that means he might be slightly easier to crack than some of Joker’s other known regulars.

Bruce isn’t exactly proud of acting on a plan that involves taking advantage of another person’s disability, but tonight he’s desperate. He has to press _somewhere_. Dmitri might not know anything but for a long time, he used to be close to Joker. It’s worth a shot.

So, as the man turns to peer into the shadows, Bruce steps out behind him and says, “Hello, Dmitri.” 

The mook freezes where he stands. To his credit, though, he doesn’t scream or bolt for the door, only turns to stare at Bruce, his lone brow furrowed in confusion, his forehead wrinkled. They’ve shaved his head, and faded tattoos peek out from under the fuzz.

“Bats.” He nods his head cordially enough, as though greeting a casual acquaintance. “How’s it hanging.”

He moves to take one of the chairs, turning his back on Bruce as he does. The plastic cracks under his considerable weight, the chair barely able to contain him, but he doesn’t seem to mind. When he looks up at Bruce he wears an expression of mild curiosity, as if to say, _Well?_. After a moment Bruce takes the chair across the table from him. 

“I’ve come to ask —”

“Where is the boss?”

Bruce narrows his eyes. Dmitri is staring him down, impassive, and his bright gray eyes take on a hard gleam.

“He’s safe,” Bruce tells him. “I’m looking after him.”

Dmitri studies him for another heartbeat before he nods and lets himself relax. “You better,” he warns Bruce, voice thick with the remnants of his Russian accent, “or else next time I see you I make you eat lead.” 

Bruce fights the urge to smirk. “That’s fair,” he allows. “I’ve come to ask you a few questions.”

“About the boss?”

“Yes. And Arkham.”

“Why?”

“I’m on a case.”

That puts Dmitri on the alert again and he eyes Bruce mistrustfully, twirling his thumbs. “About Arkham?”

“Yes.”

“What case?”

He has to be careful, now. This is the part where he tries to play the poor bastard, and with one wrong word it might all fall apart. 

“The Joker has… given me hints,” he tells Dmitri. “I’m following up on them to see if they’re true. I hope you can help me.”

Dmitri falls silent, face cracking into worry. Bruce can see him chewing on the inside of his cheek. His eyes drop to his hands, cuffed and folded on top of the table. 

“What did he say?” he asks.

Bruce’s mind dangles snippets from the Joker recording at him. The wrong ones. He tries to ignore the surge of heat and all the subsequent pangs of anxiety and makes himself focus on the relevant bits, and tells Dmitri, “He implied that he slept with guard Andrew Lautner. He also dropped insinuations about Dr. Lancer. Is that true?”

Dmitri takes a moment to answer, some deep internal conflict digging deep ridges of worry across his hard, scarred face. “You say implied,” he mumbles slowly. “You say insinuations. He give you details?”

“No. That’s why I’m here.”

“Then I won’t give you details either. I just say, it’s true. You should do something.”

“I wanted to.” Bruce reaches for the belt and retrieves the printed photographs of the murdered men. “But I think you got there before me. Did you kill those men, Dmitri?”

Dmitri peers at the photographs. He doesn’t react immediately, but watching his face as he realizes just what he’s looking at is fascinating — Bruce can practically trace the laborious flow of his thoughts as they tick and twitch across his face, widening his eyes, pulling his mouth into a tight, tight line. He’s recognized the men, and his opinion of them is crystal clear.

Before Bruce can stop him, he spits on the photographs. He sits back and stares Bruce right in the eye.

He says, “Yes.”

There’s no remorse there, no hesitation. Only rage and bone-deep disdain settling behind his eyes, and a hint of pride for having dealt with the problem. This man has spent his entire adult life on the bosom of Gotham’s underworld, learning the game, playing by its rules, and it has spilled into his blood. For a hot moment the hard, unrelenting coldness in his eyes reminds Bruce of a night a long time ago, a dark alley and two gunshots, and —

He clears his head. He asks, “Why?”

“Motherfuckers hurt Mr. J,” Dmitri explains with alarming simplicity. “Mr. J and I, we tracked them down. And we killed them dead.”

A chill crawls up Bruce’s back. He demands, “For what, Dmitri? What did they do that you felt they deserved the death sentence?”

“I told you. They hurt Mr. J.”

“That’s what Joker told you?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s all you needed to kill seven men? His word?”

“ _Yes_.” Dmitri’s eyes narrow, the lines of his muscles tense under the prison jumpsuit. “I believe him. Mr. J never lied to me. And our people at Arkham, they say, it’s true.”

Bruce frowns. “You have… people? At Arkham?”

“Sure.” Dmitri looks genuinely surprised that Bruce would even ask. “Lots. Mr. J is good at playing people. Bribes, threats, we have a network. They’re afraid of him or they want to get rich, anyway, most bad bosses have people in Arkham. That’s how he escapes, gets info, hurts people.”

“Who?” Bruce demands.

Dmitri clamps his mouth shut and says nothing.

“Who, Dmitri?”

“You want to help Mr. J?” the gangster asks, and Bruce has to sit back, fists clenched.

“Maybe.”

“Then you stop asking. It’s our business.”

“I’m going to find out eventually.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Not from me.”

Bruce considers, and finally gives him a terse nod. “Fine. Did they confirm Joker’s story?”

Dmitri nods. He doesn’t offer anything else.

So Bruce asks, “Dmitri. What exactly did they confirm?”

“Sons of bitches hurt Mr. J.”

“How?”

Dmitri shakes his head, looking distressed.

“Look,” Bruce tries, “if you cooperate I could see to it that a good lawyer reviews your case so that they may take some years off your sentence.”

The man shakes his head again, more vehemently. Bruce’s jaw tenses. He really, really doesn’t want to do this. But it seems Dmitri’s loyalty, misplaced though it is, really does run remarkably deep, leaving him very little choice. 

Goddammit.

“See, I don’t think they did hurt your boss,” he challenges, leaning forward across the table, pitching his voice low. “I think your boss lied to you. I think he only wanted them killed because that’s what he does. He hurts those who try to help him.”

Dmitri’s reaction is immediate. His eyes flare open, and furious color spills across his cheeks, and his back shoots upwards as he yells, “ _Nyet_! You lying, _blyat_!”

Bruce doesn’t relent. He says, “He only accused them because he wanted to destroy their lives.”

“You don’t know anything!”

“I know Joker. I know how petty he is, how he enjoys making people suffer. Why should I believe anything he says?”

Dmitri shuts his eyes, pressing his cuffed hands to his enormous chest. He starts to rock in the small plastic chair, making it squeak. “Shut up,” he whispers, “shut up.”

“You had no right to kill those men. No right. They were only doing their jobs.”

“No they weren’t!” Dmitri yells, sweat beading on his temple. The rocking is getting worse. 

“Of course they were,” Bruce presses. “They had to exact discipline if Joker was acting out.”

“No! They weren’t doing their job,” Dmitri protests. “They weren’t, they weren’t.”

“How would you know?” Bruce demands. “You’re not a doctor. You’ve never been to Arkham. You wouldn’t know a thing about what’s needed to keep the peace in that place, or to —”

“They beat him!” Dmitri explodes, face red with outrage, desperation squeezing tears out of his eyes. “They beat him all the time, gave him electroshocks all the time! They locked him up in solitary, no food, no water, no toilet! And they drugged him, and when he couldn’t defend himself they took him to basement and they… and they…” He closes his eyes, and sobs, and big fat tears trail down his cheeks.

Bruce’s heart is racing. Blood is draining from his face, sweating cold under the cowl. _Oh God._

“They drugged him,” he repeats, “and took him to the basement… to…?” And Dmitri is nodding, still sobbing and nodding, and Bruce — God, he can’t breathe, blood rushes in his ears and he can’t _breathe_.

“He never told me,” Dmitri sobs, rocking in the chair, twisting his own fingers. “Never gave details, only said, They hurt me, we need to kill so and so. And I don’t ask. But one of the Arkham guys, he came to talk to me. He heard those motherfuckers talk about it in the bathroom, how they took revenge for Lautner, Lautner was their friend, Mr. J hurt him and they showed him who’s boss. And he was drugged. Maybe he don’t even remember it all. But they _bragged_ about it, like, they was proud, and they think, no one gives a shit in Arkham, lotsa guards fuck inmates, and…” 

Suddenly, the words break into a ragged gasp. Dmitri’s eyes widen and his pupils shrink. He stares up at Bruce, and his face is a picture of absolute soul-crashing horror.

“No,” he whispers, “no no no, Mr. J, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say —”

He pounds against his forehead, chain clanking. His palpable distress helps Bruce momentarily overcome his own, and in this precious moment of clarity he bounds across the table to yank the man’s hands away before he can do himself serious harm. 

“Stop that,” he urges, “it’s okay.”

“No! You don’t understand!” The tears keep coming, and the despair in the gangster’s eyes twists Bruce’s heart inside out. “He never told _me_! You can’t — you was never supposed to know —”

“Dmitri.”

“He’d never want _you_ to know —!”

He tries to wrestle his hands out of Bruce’s grasp. Bruce holds on, firmly, and demands, “Are you sure of this?”

Dmitri sobs for another few moments before he nods, still guilt-stricken and miserable.

“And what does Dr. Lancer have to do with this? You never killed _him_ , and yet —”

“Mr. J wanted to save him for last,” Dmitri whispers eventually, turning away from Bruce. “And a few other bastards. He said, let them stew. He planned something big. But then you happened and we never finished business.”

“Why?” Bruce presses, barely recognizing his own voice. “What did they do? Tell me so I can punish them.”

Something in Bruce’s voice knifes through Dmitri’s panic. He looks up and meets Bruce’s eye. His own still glisten with tears as he takes his time searching, trying to read him through the cowl.

“You believe me?”

“Yes,” Bruce confesses over a heart that wants to wring itself dry. 

Dmitri sniffles and wipes his nose on the sleeve of his jumpsuit. He tells Bruce, quietly, “Dr. Lancer, he gave the drugs. Electroshocks first, and then drugs. And he… watched.”

 _Shit._ Bruce remembers what Joker said on the tape, _He likes to watch, see?_ , and all at once his body is trembling with the effort to keep itself still instead of up and tearing out of Blackgate and all through the city until he crashes through Lancer’s window and cracks his skull against the damned wall.

“A few other doctors, they know,” Dmitri is whispering, slumping in the chair. “And they let it happen. Mr. J wanted to kill them, too, only…”

Bruce sets his jaw, finally letting the man’s hands drop heavily from his grip. His eyes are flooding red, his gut is screaming at him to go out and hunt and hunt and _hurt_ , but he forces himself to stay put, and squeeze Dmitri’s shoulder.

“You did good,” he tries over the burn in his throat, but Dmitri is shaking his head, and his eyes once again spill over.

“No,” he protests, “no, I didn’t. I said too much. Mr. J, he’s — in a situation like that, your dignity is all you have, dignity and revenge, and I took that away from him just now, don’t you get it? It was his choice, who he wants to know. It should be. He cares about you and he don’t want _you_ of all people —”

Bruce can feel his resolve slipping. He looks at Dmitri, and is swept in a wave of self-hatred so strong it nearly trips him to the floor. This man, right now, is showing more respect for Joker than he is, and what he’s done is _ugly_ , it’s so ugly and what he’s feeling, what he wants to do right now is uglier still, and — 

Jesus Christ, Dick was right. He was right. Bruce isn’t fit to carry on with this case anymore. He has to — he has to step aside. Before he does something that can’t be undone, even uglier than — this.

“They will be punished,” he promises Dmitri, squaring his shoulders, because right now that’s all he can do. “I promise.”

Suddenly Dmitri is lunging to his feet, nearly knocking Bruce over to the floor.

“If you hurt him, Batman —” the gangster cries, stepping into Bruce’s personal space, “if you hurt him —!”

Bruce meets his eyes. Something — complicated bubbles to the surface, and he finds himself promising, “I won’t.”

He won’t be able to keep his word. They both know it. But…

But he _wants_ to. He wants to be able to. And maybe Dmitri recognizes that in his voice, if not his face.

He collapses back onto the plastic chair. He hides his face in his hands. 

“Tell him I’m sorry,” he pleads.

Bruce turns to leave, but something stops him. He looks back at Dmitri. He reaches out to touch his shoulder. 

“You’ve taken good care of him,” he whispers. 

Dmitri sobs, and doesn’t stop as Bruce finally leaves. 

 

***

 

The shock of the scene is somehow enough to stop him from going straight to Lancer’s place. Instead, the last remnants of rationality steer him straight to Gotham Central, and he drops into Jim’s office, and finally he relays to him everything he’s unearthed over the course of the investigation. Keeping it clinical helps. Clinical, technical, professional. It gives him a semblance of distance where there is none, a power to keep his voice still instead of growling, but even so he stays in the shadows so Jim can’t see his fists shaking where they stay rigid by his sides.

He doesn’t want to, God knows he doesn’t, but he _needs_ to pass the case on. If he saw Lancer now, or anyone from Dr. Mulligan’s files, he might…

It’s better this way. 

Jim doesn’t interrupt him until he’s done. Then, he leans his elbows on the desk, takes off the glasses and rubs his eyes, sighing. 

“Can you prove any of this?” he asks.

“Working on it.”

“Right. Of course you are.”

“I’ll give you enough evidence to put them under arrest. Just do it.”

“My detectives will need something to go on.”

“I’ll provide it. Enough material and leads to build a case that can stand up in court. Arrest them. Start with Dr. Lancer.”

“We’re starting a full-on assault on Arkham, I take it?”

“Yes. It’s about time.”

Jim nods tiredly. He’s still rubbing his eyes, not looking at Bruce. “I guess. Everyone knows that place is a hellhole but…” He takes a moment, and Bruce feels sick to his stomach because yes, that’s what he used to think, too. _But._ But a necessary hellhole. But a place that’s best left to its own devices. But nothing better can be arranged and after all, it’s impossible to weed out all corruption altogether, especially in Gotham. 

Well, no more. They can do better, and starting tonight, they will.

“I hope other victims come forward,” Jim says eventually. “If it’s only about the clown the charges will never stick. Hell, the perps’ll get a standing ovation.”

Bruce breathes out through his nose. “It’s not just him,” he says as his heart pounds in his ears.

“Fine. God. You got anything for me to justify the arrests so I can get the mayor off my tail?”

“Robin will deliver everything we have in an hour.”

“Right. Then we’ll decide how to go about it. I imagine you’ll want in on this, so why don’t we coordinate —” 

Bruce is already climbing out through the window and flying onto the adjacent building, calling Jason.

Then, he sprints over the rooftops to perch on the spires of the Gotham Cathedral, looking out for any criminal activity, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help a bit. He’s still a mass of boiling rage, and the emotion coils in his every muscle, in every white-hot thought, and he’s almost _relieved_ because he knows that if it wasn’t for the rage, he’d be seriously considering throwing himself down from the cathedral tower and into the traffic. 

To distract himself from the urges that want to steal into his body, he calls Dick and explains the situation. He expects objections, but Dick only sighs and says, “Fine. I have people here who have already volunteered to testify, they just need to come forward when the GCPD come knocking.”

“Good. You should be gone before they get there.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll finish the shift and then I’ll hand in my notice. You okay? The Blackgate visit paid off, I take it?” 

“We’ll talk later,” Bruce tells him and hangs up. 

It’s going to take time. Jim will need to review the evidence they’ve collected and come up with “anonymous sources,” he’ll need to mobilize the force, assign detectives, work out a strategy, get warrants. Hold interrogations. Collect reliable witnesses. Let his detectives pore over the security tapes and the files on their own, so they can arrive at the conclusions independently of the Batman. Convince the D.A. that the case is worth taking to court. And then, the hearings, the trials, the uncertainty of the verdict — that is going to take ages, too, and it’s going to be torture. 

But much as he wants to, he can’t intimidate confessions out of the suspects. Not the Arkham crowd. They’ve seen too much, they know too much, they’re not afraid of him as they ought to be. 

Bruce can work on that — later. When he’s relatively confident that he’ll be able to stop himself from smashing Lancer’s head open again and again and again and again, because as it is… 

The rage presses up tight against his skin, like it’s trying to push him out of his own body. And underneath, Dick’s words still linger, and the fear, and the self-loathing, and he’s… 

He’s still not sure he deserves to be wearing the costume. He might not ever be again, especially now, especially after the conversation with Dmitri. God, he’s losing control. He’s letting himself slip. His city deserves better, a defender who can actually keep his shit together, who isn’t so goddamn _broken_ , and he looks out over the blaze of a million little lights, praying for a sign…

A scream cuts through the air, and he turns. Below, a terrified woman is clutching a child close to her body while a man waves a gun in front of her face, demanding something, onlookers scattering in fear. No one is trying to help. No one lingers to stop the attacker, even when he shoots into the air in a show of strength.

Bruce narrows his eyes. Is this his answer? Is this how he’s supposed to read it?

He doesn’t know. But there’s no time to think — the thug is taking aim. 

So Bruce adjusts the cowl over his face and ignores the tightness, and swoops down to do his work. 

And as he does, he thinks, yes, he might be broken. He might be unworthy. But he’s the only one the city has right now. And maybe it doesn’t need him to be perfect — maybe it just _needs_ him. Because in the end, he’s the only one who can do this, and it’s what it’s always come down to. 

If he can, then he must. 

 

***

 

He spends the night like he usually does when he has no big cases to work on, stopping a dozen petty crimes, seeking them out with a desperation he knows is mostly borne out of the need to distract himself. It doesn’t work. He only manages to exhaust himself, to think in circles until he’s ready to either scream or collapse, and he’s no closer to thinking up a solution to all this than he was at the beginning. 

Maybe there is no solution. Maybe this time there is no strategy he can plan out. Maybe he just… he just needs to wait and see, and test himself day by day.

Which of course is no comfort at all. It can’t be. But by the time he drags himself home he is so drained, so completely overwhelmed, that he has no choice but to accept it.

Still, instead of to his own bedroom, his steps carry him up the stairs. He doesn’t even think about it — he’s too tired, so terribly goddamn _tired_. He just — somehow, he thinks that this is where he should be. Where he has to be. He needs to confront it, this feeling and himself, one more time.

To be sure. 

He stops before the door to Joker’s rooms. He looks into the camera.

“I need time alone with the prisoner,” he demands with all the authority he can muster. “You can take it up with Commissioner Gordon if you don’t like it. I’m moving our unsupervised hour from tomorrow to now.”

 _It’s a mistake_ , the rational part of his brain says, and he agrees. He’s just too tired to care, and he needs — he needs — 

The guards pass him on their way out, eyeing him warily. He waits and makes sure they’re gone, lured away for the hour with the promise of tea and hot buns from Alfred, and then he punches the code.

He just — he needs. He’s so tired, and he needs to find out, to make sure, to settle how he feels and see if he can control himself still, but most of all he just — needs.

The doors open. Beyond, the parlor is dark and still, the curtains drawn, filtering in weak slivers of the coming sunrise. 

Bruce lets the doors close behind him and calls, “Joker?”

He steps into the parlor and takes a moment to listen to his own heartbeat. It doesn’t seem to want to calm down no matter how much he tries to steady his breath, and only picks up its pace when he looks into the bedroom.

“Joker?”

He’s on the bed, pale and still in the half-gloom. He stirs when Bruce steps in, pushing himself up on his elbows, a thin, spidery figure rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“Darling?”

Bruce swallows and closes his eyes. His heart skips, and the world swims under his closed eyelids. _Darling._

Oh God, he _needs_ , and he — and he — 

“Darling,” Joker whispers, and Bruce can hear him shuffling on the bed, “what’s wrong? You look like death warmed over. Trust me, I’m an expert.”

He giggles. Bruce keeps his eyes closed, because suddenly he’s afraid of what he might do if he opens them.

He shouldn’t be here. He should keep his distance, and think of ways to help Joker without coming into his presence so often, he should play it cool and just pretend like he used to, he should find it in himself to do that for both their sakes, but —

Long, gentle fingers touch his face. Bruce can smell citrus, and just a hint of sweat and a chemical whiff underneath it all, and what he supposes is the smell of Joker’s sleep-warmed breath. 

“Darling,” Joker coos, pressing, cupping his face on both sides. “What is it?”

Bruce releases a breath. He risks opening his eyes and looks straight into Joker’s, green and sleepy but alert all the same. Warmth rushes him all at once, warmth and need and shame, and his heart rattles, and his eyes sting. He tries to speak. He can’t.

“Oh, baby,” Joker whispers, rubbing a thumb gently across Bruce’s cheek. Bruce wants to lean into his touch, and it scares him just how much. “Come on,” Joker coaxes, “come. You look just about ready to keel over.”

He takes Bruce’s hand and leads him to the bed. 

And Bruce follows, because he’s too tired and lost and the need shoots into all of his nerve endings, and he lets himself be pushed down onto the bed, and he lets Joker crawl on beside him. He lets him cradle his head close, lets himself be tucked into Joker’s slim body. Him in his armor, Joker in thin pajamas. Arms that smell of sleep and warmth and chemicals around his neck, his head. Legs tangling with his. His own arms come up over Joker’s to close around his back. His lips stutter against Joker’s shoulder as he breathes out. Joker coos quietly as he strokes his head through the kevlar, and Bruce can barely feel it but that’s probably for the best. 

He closes his eyes. They sting even now, hot and sandy, and he breathes, and slowly, just like when Joker jumped into his arms the other day, the riot in his heart begins to ease.

And the thing is, this time, the fact that it does doesn’t scare him. Maybe he’s too drained for that, too exhausted, but he thinks a part of him knew that he’d react like that, and maybe this is what he needed. This warmth, this — calm, proving beyond a shadow of doubt what the ache in his heart really is. He’ll examine it all, from every angle — later. Later. When he has the energy to feel guilty again.

For now, he holds on. And Dmitri’s confession rattles in his head, and he _hurts_ , hurts not so much for himself but for this man who is now holding him with no idea about how much Bruce really knows, and Bruce aches with how much he suddenly yearns to just whisk him away from everything, disappear somewhere, just the two of them, so they could have a sliver of a chance to maybe sort this mess out between them in peace.

But of course he can do no such thing, and the only peace they can have is in moments like this one that they carve out for themselves by force.

And Bruce… wants more of them. Which, in and of itself, is all the confirmation he really needs. 

He still needs to figure out what to do about all this, but now… Now, he thinks, all he really wants to do is feel. Doesn’t matter how much it may hurt. He deserves to hurt. 

He’s a selfish bastard.

“You’re tired, is that it?” Joker asks in a warm whisper. “So tired. Poor Batsy. It’s all right, baby, you can stay here with me as long as you like.”

If only that were true. Bruce holds him closer, and he hears rather than feels Joker pressing a light kiss to the top of the cowl. 

“You really should consider trying out one of my miracle pills,” Joker suggests. “They do wonders for insomnia.”

“Shut up,” Bruce whispers, and Joker chuckles, stroking circles over his cheek. 

“Any particular reason why you’d come to me?”

Bruce bites down on his bottom lip. He hesitates, and then, because Joker is being so warm and kind and open and he is feeling particularly weak and he thinks he owes Joker this much, he whispers, “You’re the only one fucked up enough to get me.”

Joker doesn’t say anything for a minute. 

Then he murmurs, “Yes. Yes, I am.” He brushes another gentle kiss to Bruce’s head. “Birds of a feather, you and I, mmmm?”

“No,” Bruce breathes, and feels Joker shudder against him when the words ghost right over his naked skin. “We’re not. But…”

“I know,” Joker hums. “I know.”

And maybe he really does. 

Maybe they’ve both known for ages. 

For a moment they go silent, just breathing together. Joker doesn’t let it last. Soon enough, he picks up a melody, which he proceeds to hum into Bruce’s cowl. His chest vibrates with it, and Bruce can feel it in his face. 

He presses his eyes closed again. He sighs.

“That’s a terrible song.”

“It’s a wonderful song,” Joker protests, and then he sings out loud, “You know I can’t smile without you… can’t smile without you. I can’t laugh, and I can’t sing… I’m finding it hard to do anything…”

“You’re a terrible singer,” Bruce tells him, and Joker chuckles, patting him fondly on the cheek.

He keeps humming the song, and Bruce doesn’t interrupt him again. Instead he counts each minute, measured by the flow of Joker’s raspy, scratchy voice, and lets his heart settle against Joker’s. 

He doesn’t let himself fall asleep, but it’s… close enough. 

Close enough.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Better late than never, right? And this time around you're getting a double treat - two chapters for the price of one! The entire thing was 16k and a half and I didn't want to dump it all on you in one go, so I spaced it out, hopefully you'll like it. 
> 
> Even though there's some ugly shit going down. Anyway.
> 
> News! I continue to be spoiled ROTTEN by all of you wonderful people and once again there are new shinies for me to boast about, and I seriously cannot even begin to say what it means to me. Arkhxm did this [beautiful](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/151387549558/arkhxm-day-3-that-scene-from-half-way-across) illustration of the hug in the last chapter, and [so did joons](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/150359381913/joons-darling-half-way-across-chapter-9-by), and [so did Mellie](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/150253660998/mellie-art-fan-art-for-half-way-across-by), and [ so did McFudgie](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/149558422918/mcfudgie-said-fanart-for-you-bc-the-latest)! It's seriously too much gorgeousness for me to handle. But that's not all because weneedwhiskey did this [adorable art of probably the purest and least problematic Joker OTP](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/149567655803/weneedwhiskey-joker-and-reggie-from-dracze-s) and sombrero-de-copa did this [stunning piece of that other hug](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/150530448673/sombrero-de-copa-this-is-a-little-gift-for-you). 
> 
> HWA now also has [another amazing aesthetics post, thanks to taliaalghul](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/150359466863/taliaaghul-fic-aesthetics-half-way-across-by) and if you're tired of the slow burn (the slowest, I'm sorry) you can check out [the fic Lonewritersclub wrote](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7952569) which is inspired by HWA and takes things in a darker, a bit more disturbing direction (warnings for severe dubcon).
> 
> I am the luckiest and happiest ficcer, you guys. The happiest.
> 
> My HWA tag on tumblr also has a bunch of new meta you might find interesting, including posts about the significance of the "one, two, three" thing and Jeannie's presence in the story. If you have any questions or observations about anything, go ahead and drop me an ask and I'll do my best to answer.
> 
> A thousand thank yous to Mitzvah for the beta - her comments helped me finally hammer this thing into something presentable, and a lot of the ideas, especially in chapter 11, are hers. *ton of hugs* 
> 
> Okay. Phew. That's it from me. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

_”I… I have to go now.”_

_Finger doodling idle patterns against his cheek. Pausing. Turning, the sharp point of the nail pressing in, dancing on the razor’s edge of pain._

_A whisper._

_”Then go.”_

_Warmth, sleepy, comfortable, fitted all snug around him, denying the words, trapping him in. The heartbeat humming through the layers of flesh and skin and cotton just against his face. He turns his head, just a little, touching the tip of his nose to where the unbuttoned collar of the pajama shirt falls open to tease a hint of skin, the sharp jut of collarbone._

_So close. Too close. The tip of the cowl’s nose is sharp and drags a faint fleshy line over white skin, no longer than the width of a pinky fingernail. He can see it reddening, can measure its distance to the closest scar half-peeking from under Joker’s shirt._

_He remembers the scar. Remembers the flash of a batarang skidding across a silk yellow shirt, tearing through. The red splash of blood, the cold lash of wind._

_He breathes out and as he does, his lips steal against the warmth, inches from the scar._

_A stutter in the heartbeat. A sharp intake of breath._

_”Darling.”_

_The fingers twitch, uncertain. Remorse churns in Bruce’s gut, heavy, intrusive, a sharp drop like the split-moment mid-jump when the grapple rope takes just a blink too long to snap taut._

_He pushes himself up, and then away._

_”I’m sorry.”_

_”For what?” Green eyes, sharp and questing, pinning him down with a gleam of altogether too keen understanding. For all the armor between them, he feels like he’s the one exposed. He turns away, mouth tingling from the warmth of white skin pressed close, close, much too close._

_He pulls himself to his feet, sheets rustling. “I’m going now.”_

_A deep sigh. “Oh, fine, if you must.”_

_One last look, stolen over his shoulder, at the red streak of a smile in the blur of dawn. Fresh early sun, stealing into the room through the narrow cracks between curtains, has settled in bright smears of light over Joker’s hair, lining his shoulders, dripping down his cheeks._

_Bruce’s world tilts. His heart skids and fumbles like a foot catching on a loose roof tile. The suit bites into his skin, and he…_

“Master Bruce?”

Alfred is waiting for him by the stairs. The sun is painting over his lines, too, but unlike the warmth skin-haze of the Joker’s bedroom, here the light is stark, brightly aggressive, and standing in it, Alfred looks starker still, an altogether too real presence challenging the specters Bruce hasn’t quite begun to clear.

There’s the sharp jolt of a drop again, lancing through the haze. Bruce blinks and tries to still the urge to turn away and rush back into the comfort of the gloom beyond the doors of steel. 

Alfred steps closer, his brows drawn tight, his posture stiff. “Sir, is everything…?”

Bruce breathes. His arm shoots out, blindly, to seek the banister. His fingers curl over the sleek, polished wood and then his palm presses in hard, needing to ground. His home. Wood his ancestors had carved years and years and years ago. Solid, familiar, real. He lets it steady him even through the haze that doesn’t quite agree to fall away.

“I’m fine, Alfred,” he says, and his voice booms down the grand staircase to be swallowed up in plush red carpets. 

Alfred’s mouth curls in disapproval — disbelief. Bruce passes him, descending, letting first the banister and then the inevitable reality of his own home guide him to the bedroom. Alfred follows, as softfooted as ever, and Bruce almost wishes he’d stomp. Just to get his mind something else to focus on other than the memory of Joker’s fingers doodling on his cheek. 

“Sleep now, I think,” Alfred says, reaching out for pieces of the suit.

Bruce’s hands, obedient like a sleepwalker’s, come up to undo the clasps like they have every morning since he started the Mission…

And then his mind catches up, and they stop just inches short.

Alfred is looking at him. “Master Bruce?” He pauses, and then adds, gently, “You’re not going to start to sleep in that thing now, are you?”

Bruce can barely hear him through the layer of gauze that seems to have grown over his mind.

Because the suit, it’s… It’s still carrying the warmth of Joker’s bed on it. Bits of dark, hazy dawn have settled in the crevices in the armor, stuck like grains of sand in the joints. Echoes of Joker’s voice, _Darling, darling_ , streaked over the plating. A coating of citrus over the cowl. And the thing is, the thing is… 

Bruce isn’t sure he’s quite ready to give it up.

“Sir.”

Bruce’s eyes snap to Alfred, and suddenly he’s eleven and caught reading one of his mother’s harlequin novels in the pantry. Reality tears through the gauze again, leaving him bared, tender and raw and younger than he’s felt in years. 

He undoes the clasps and, roughly, starts to shed the suit piece by piece, his muscles stiff, his face heating up. 

Even then the cowl is the last to go, and the sudden kiss of cool air against the sweat gluing his hair to his brow helps Bruce keep his face blank when he hands it over to Alfred and spots the twin red stains across the top. 

The kisses.

He stares at them until Alfred gently but firmly negotiates the cowl from his grip. 

“That’s enough of that now,” he says. “I’ll — wash it. It’ll be ready again for tonight.” 

_No,_ Bruce wants to say, _don’t you dare._ It crowds against the skin of his face, a hot flush spilling over his cheeks, stomping down on his breath. 

He turns his back on Alfred before he says or does something he won’t be able to take back, like wrestling the cowl back and putting it away somewhere safe so it’ll always carry the marks Joker gave it. This means he is now facing his own bathroom, its door ajar and promising sanctuary, and he takes refuge in the idea, telling Alfred, “I’ll shower now. Let me know if anything comes up.”

“I…” Alfred hesitates, and Bruce can hear the questions in his voice. His shoulders set into a tense line. Alfred sighs.

“Very well,” he says at last. “Maybe this time you’ll actually manage something resembling a _proper_ rest.” The emphasis on _proper_ grazes Bruce somewhere too-raw, too-tender, and he stalks away to the bathroom before Alfred can see. He’s done letting people see him this unguarded and vulnerable. He’d much rather nurse the rawness in peace, and when he shuts the door and locks it, it almost feels like he’s locking out the world with all its confusion, responsibilities and piercing, questioning eyes.

Almost.

He allows himself a certain degree of sluggishness getting into the shower. The same reluctance that had him hold onto the suit and then the cowl guides his hands now to hover over the knobs. As soon as he turns them, the smell of citrus will be chased away for good, drowned under an ice-cold spray of water…

… but so, too, will the haze. Or so Bruce hopes. And with any luck, some of that raw, naked, exposed feeling will sluice down the drain with it.

He turns the knob, steps right into the shock of cold water and lets it whip him as a stand-in for his mind, which clearly isn’t up to the task.

The facts, he tries to think, staring vaguely into the white squares of the tiles. His eyes trace a single drop questing down the sliver of grout. The facts…

The facts.

Thing is, though, Bruce isn’t quite sure he wants to concentrate on them right now. He’d much rather just stand there and count water drops on the tiles and soak up the lashes of water like the punishment he knows he deserves. Because right now the facts are a big toothy maw eager to swallow him up into pitch black darkness and shred him on the way down, and all this will achieve, he knows, is it’ll spit him out the other side a torn, bleeding wreck.

Too bad it’s never been about what Bruce _wants_.

So… the facts, and fact number one that he has to face before anything else is that — as far as he and Dmitri know — while at Arkham, Joker was raped. 

Fact number two is that the knowledge strikes Bruce right down the middle with a zap of lightning so fierce and sudden that he’s like a tree catching fire, and every time it happens it gets harder and harder to put the fire out. 

Which brings him to fact number three, and it is this: he’d gone to Joker for comfort, and — fact number four — got it.

And that ties neatly with fact number five, which is that Bruce wishes he was still back there in that half-dark room, listening to a raspy love song, smelling chemicals and citrus.

His hands find his upper arms and close in, digging into skin. Without thinking about it he starts to press his fingers into skin one by one in a rhythm he only half-recognizes, one, two, three on the one arm, one, two, three on the other, pause, repeat, one two three, one two three… His heart swells with the count and then shrinks, and swells again, and feels like it might bruise against his ribs if it grows any bigger. 

He shakes his head, sending water flying and splatting against the glass walls of the cabin. His breath is coming short and the tiles blur into one another. Bruce steadies himself against the wall of the cabin and slowly lets himself crouch down, dropping his head, letting ice-cold water hit against the nape of his neck. He struggles to concentrate past the throb of panic. He focuses on his breath. 

_Easy. Easy…_

He gives himself time, and slowly, slowly, manages to meditate the squeeze on his lungs to release. Then he levels himself back up and turns the knobs to let the water warm up. As he does, he thinks of Dick and his earnest face, and his reassurances, and that might be a mistake because his heart wants to grow bigger again despite his best efforts, for entirely different reasons this time, and it only drives home that he doesn’t know what to do about any of this. Now that he’s given up the reins of the Arkham investigation he is without direction, a hapless molecule bouncing off one feeling and into the next, and it seems that inevitably, the one molecule he crashes against most often is the Joker.

The Joker, with his sleep-lined eyes and yesterday’s unwashed lipstick and a halo of dawn gleaming in his hair as he smiles Bruce out of the room, sharp edges blurred, white skin warmed, lines softened into something pliant, inviting, promising… 

Bruce’s heart stirs, and, despite the earlier assault of cold water, so does his cock. He groans and leans his forehead against the chilled tiles. He breathes. In, out, in, out…

Because, fact number six… he can’t do anything about any of… that. Not yet, no matter how much he wants to, no matter how much he suspects Joker might want it too, which, ha, isn’t altogether clear. Not that it matters either way. For now, he’s Joker’s caretaker slash watchdog, and making any sort of… move… is unacceptable. 

Even if he knew what sort of move he’d be ready or willing to make in the first place, which is a whole other question, and one he really isn’t going to investigate now that he’s standing here half-hard and pathetic in the shower feeling sorry for himself.

Fact number seven: he needs a new case. Or… anything, really, to throw himself at that isn’t related to Joker at all, just so he doesn’t lose the thread of reason and purpose entirely, so he doesn’t give in to the panic or — worse — to what caused the panic in the first place. A project he can summon when he has to visit Joker again, to help Bruce keep his distance and offer a retreat if things get dangerous.

And since none of the current Arkham inmates look prone to escaping at the moment, he’s just going to have to think of something himself.

The resolution helps. At least a little. Even if Bruce can’t exactly sleep while his brain is desperate to come up with a project he at least tries to spend a couple of hours meditating on the bed, which is the next best thing. When he emerges out into the house some hours later, he makes sure to check if Joker is okay and then announces that he’s off to the office. 

“Want me to come with you?” Dick offers, waving his Haly’s Circus mug at him and nearly spilling what’s left of his coffee.

“No.” Bruce adjusts his tie and then looks around the kitchen. “Where’s Jason?”

“Said he was going to town,” Dick says with a shrug, and he draws into himself, looking uncomfortable. “He… He’s taking this Joker thing quite hard, you know.”

Bruce pauses. There’s that squeeze on his lungs again. 

“Were you watching us?” he asks. 

If anything, Dick looks even more uncomfortable, and he isn’t meeting Bruce’s eye. “Look,” he says, “it’s too early to talk about that. I need at least… three more coffees, okay? And Jason needs — time, I guess, or possibly Xanax. A lot of Xanax.” 

“Don’t we all,” Bruce murmurs.

Dick snorts. “Yeah.” He runs a hand through his hair, which is still Arkham-blond although there’s already dark roots peeking through. “Go on, Alfred and I can hold down the fort.”

Bruce nods and turns to leave.

“Cuddlebear,” Dick adds under his breath when Bruce is almost out of the kitchen.

For the good of all involved, Bruce pretends he didn’t hear that. 

 

***

 

Salvation saunters into his life later that day in the striking form of Selina Kyle, glittering her way into the office with all the ease and comfort of someone who knows without any shadow of doubt that she owns any space she enters, late afternoon light catching in the tasteful — and no doubt stolen — gold pieces adorning her neck and ears. She grins, her lips lined in brave dark lipstick that on her manages to look stylish rather than tacky, and she click-clicks on her painfully high stiletto heels over to the spare chair across from Bruce, crossing her legs and primly resting her jeweled purse in her lap.

Bruce’s heart jumps at the sight of her — it always does. He doubts that will ever change, no matter what sort of current romantic entanglements they may or may not be having. He almost wishes he could still spark in himself the old nag of longing, but it’s no use; he’d doused it a long time ago, and with good reason. These days, the jolt Selina gives him is softer, not quite as dark but with more than enough anxiety and regret thrown in to make up for the lacking fierceness. 

It’s his fault, of course. That only makes it worse when Bruce meets her eyes now and finds them bright but shuttered off, guarded, her playfulness as much of an act as his own, the only difference between them being that Selina is a much better actress and has been doing the act for much longer. 

So when she greets him with an easy “Hi” and a wink, Bruce is almost, almost taken in. “I decided to let myself in, hope you don’t mind,” she says, brushing away a strand of short hair that blew over her eye. 

Bruce, amused despite himself, returns a fraction of her dazzling smile and waves at his assistant Julie, who hovers anxiously in the doorway. She gets the hint and, blushing furiously, closes the door on them. 

“Julie is under standing orders to let you in at any time of day or night,” Bruce assures Selina, pressing the button that will shutter off the glass-walled office from the prying eyes of the rest of the floor. 

“Is that so?” Selina purrs, shooting him an intrigued look from under her hooded, heavily shaded eyes. “I thought I detected a considerable lack of opposition when I decided to just barge in uninvited.”

“You’re always invited, Selina.”

“If only that were true,” she whispers, and Bruce shifts in his chair, his bubble of relatively good humor burst. He clears his throat. 

“How can I help you?”

Instead of replying right away Selina looks around, at the blinds now shielding them from the rest of the floor. She gestures at them, the gold bracelet on her graceful wrist snatching sunshine and scattering it all over the office. “Is all this really necessary?”

“Yes,” Bruce says simply. “Both of us have fronts to maintain.”

“I’d much rather have the new front be that I kicked your sorry womanizer ass to the curb.”

“Not so much a front, that,” Bruce points out, and she grins.

“As long as you admit it.” She studies him for a moment. “You’re a difficult man to get a hold of,” she accuses, “even when you’re not wearing the tights. I’m surprised to see you here actually doing _work_.”

Bruce glances at the screens of the two laptops and one tablet spread over the desk, and at his own notes strewn around the space. He doesn’t want to admit, even to Selina, that he’d holed himself in here for the better part of the afternoon going through all of Wayne Enterprises projects, charities included, looking for something to moor himself to before he drifts too far off course. That, of course, makes him think of Joker again, and he clears his throat to center himself, Selina’s presence both grounding and distracting, especially when a corner of his mind wants to start to compare his feelings for the two of them side by side, to measure and judge and decry him as being out of his goddamn mind. 

That’s not helpful. He stamps down on the impulse and leans his elbows on the desk, and holds Selina’s increasingly amused gaze.

“Why did you want to see me?” 

Selina keeps him waiting for exactly three heartbeats before she says, her eyes never leaving his, “I need a loan.”

“Fine.”

Selina’s smirk turns incredulous when she cocks her head. “Aren’t you going to ask what for?”

Bruce shrugs. “I trust you.”

“I could be planning to use the money for a heist.”

“You could,” Bruce agrees, “but you’re not, are you? You’re too proud to ask for help, _especially_ money. You wouldn’t come to me unless it was serious.” 

A sharp spark lights up Selina’s eyes, and she leans forward, clutching the purse. “You think you know me so well, don’t you?”

Bruce lets the corner of his mouth crack up. “Well enough. Or am I wrong?”

She regards him for a few more seconds, poised and ruffled, spiked for a confrontation, before she relents with a huff. She snaps open the purse and picks up a sleek black pendrive, which she slides to him across the desk. Then she sits back without another word and watches him expectantly, folding her hands across her chest. 

Bruce accepts the challenge and activates the pendrive on the closest out of the two laptops. He can feel Selina’s expectant gaze on him as he clicks into the single folder he finds, labeled “EECC.” He selects the first file out of the several that are revealed, and blinks, surprised at what he finds. 

“Selina,” he asks, studying the image, “what is this?”

“Plans,” she explains, standing up and taking a few brisk steps to loom behind him, resting one manicured hand on the backrest of Bruce’s chair, her shadow draping over Bruce and the desk. 

“Yes, obviously,” Bruce maneuvers the first image around on the screen, puzzling out the rough 3-D outline of a building. “You want to build a house?”

She snorts. “Honestly, detective, would I come to you if I wanted anything as simple as a house?”

“What, then?”

She is silent for a moment, letting Bruce explore the other plans in the folder, and though he’s not looking at her, Bruce can tell she is stiffening, some of her playful affectation cracking at the seams.

She whispers, “I guess I’m trying to give back.” 

Bruce swivels to look at her and she retreats by a couple of steps, as though suddenly the weight of Bruce’s attention is too heavy for her. She perches on the far end of the desk, playing with the thin golden band around her wrist.

It takes her a moment to find her voice again, but Bruce doesn’t press. He waits patiently, admiring the play of light on her earrings.

“I’ve been… well. You could call it a personal trip down memory lane,” Selina confesses. Her eyes trace the movement of her own fingers over the bracelet. “Going back to my roots. You can take a girl out of the East End, but…” She smiles, bitter and self-deprecating, and her hand stills. “Point is, I’m trying out a new thing. Not exactly altruism, I wouldn’t go that far, but… close. Close enough, actually, that I think you’ll be interested in helping me. You do know I’m from the East End, right?”

Bruce nods. Her smirk turns tighter, and once again she looks away.

“Right now it’s in worse shape than ever,” she explains. “It’s always run on drugs but these days it’s _over_ run, and I’ve been trying to do something about that but ultimately, you can’t stop anyone from ending up on the streets if you don’t give them any alternatives. So… this is mine.”

She points to the plans on the screen, and Bruce’s gaze follows. 

“It’s not much,” Selina says, scooting closer, “but it’s a start. And the East End could really use a proper community center.”

 _… Oh._ Bruce studies the plans, trying to ignore the way his heart suddenly brims with warmth. “Am I getting this right? _You_ want to build a community center?”

“I’ve got half the money,” Selina says, voice spiked with challenge, “and I need you to help me out with the other half. A loan, mind you, not charity. I do intend to pay you back.”

Bruce smirks. “You’re a proud woman, Selina.”

“Yes, I am.” Now that they’re beginning to wade back out of the uncomfortable territory of _feelings_ and the, no doubt difficult, admission that Selina Kyle might possibly be planning to do something entirely unselfish, some of her studied ease returns, and she drums her sharp fingernails on Bruce’s shoulder in a manner that’s not so much seductive as fond. “Well? Will you help a girl out?”

“Tell me more,” Bruce asks, turning to her. “What exactly do you want it to be?”

“It’s still a work in progress,” Selina admits, suddenly businesslike, turning to the screen. “I talked to Leslie Thompkins. We want to build a bigger, better clinic next to the center so she could move her practice there. And as for activities, I was thinking evening classes and courses for kids _and_ adults, whoever wants to participate. We’d offer help with getting qualifications, job advice… that sort of thing. We’d have arts and crafts too, naturally, dance lessons, music lessons, language courses, the works. And a shelter for everyone who needs a safe place for whatever reason. Sex ed. We’re still hammering out the details but that’s the general plan, and I want it to run both on paid professionals and volunteers if we can swing it. The lot I have in mind would also leave some room for a small park at the back.”

When Bruce doesn’t say anything immediately she prods him lightly with the tip of her shoe, prompting, “Well? What do you think?”

Bruce swivels to face her. He suspects Selina wouldn’t appreciate a display of the full extent of pride he’s feeling right now so he tries as best he can to curb it, but some of it still slips out when he says, “Selina, this is wonderful.”

He means it, so much, and she can probably tell, judging by the pleased gleam in her eyes and the haughty tilt of her chin.

“I’m not doing this to impress you,” she asserts, but she’s smiling when she says it and Bruce is this close to smiling back. “Will you loan me the money?”

“Of course,” Bruce says, and her smile grows, turns from coy to genuinely pleased. 

“I knew you couldn’t resist a good cause,” she taunts, and Bruce lets her, commenting under his breath, “I’m glad to see you’re beginning to see the appeal of good causes too.”

“Hey.” She swats him on the shoulder. “Don’t you dare climb that high horse. We still need to talk business.”

“Yes,” Bruce agrees, amused, “excuse me.”

And so talk business they do, discussing the plans, the costs, the logistics, the timeline. Bruce gets in touch with his trusted city planners, construction specialists, designers and cost analysts while Selina keeps jotting down the suggestions and rough estimates and interjects her own insights into the conversations. Hours fly and by the time they’re ready to wrap things up for the day it’s nearly dinnertime, and, despite his better judgment, Bruce lets himself be dragged to the Italian bistro around the corner, where he indulges Selina in her eager toast. 

Truth be told, it’s impossible to refuse her anything, not when she looks radiant with fresh purpose, bright and strong and driven like she hadn’t been in a long time, and possibly the most beautiful Bruce has ever seen her. It’s easy to endure it with good grace when she teases and laughs at him, because her manner is free and familiar rather than malicious, and the twinkle in her eyes tells Bruce she doesn’t really mean it when she calls him a dour sourpuss.

And the thing is, it’s _so_ easy to remember why he fell so hard for her all those years ago, watching her now as she twinkles and dazzles and charms even this pompous little place into something comfortable and exciting. Why he still does love her, in a warm, distant, achey sort of way, dulled with guilt and just a touch of relief that things hadn’t worked out between them after all. Selina once called him a killjoy, and that’s what he’d been for her, standing in her way, dragging her down without ever meaning to, never once daring to return her promises with any of his own because when it came down to it, she came from a world of grays and ambiguity he couldn’t possibly understand. That… wasn’t fair, for either of them. 

Now that she’s decided to liberate herself of him for good, or attempted to, she’s thriving. She’s free and spirited and powerful again, with a new sense of direction he envies very much while at the same time feeling prouder than anyone possibly could. It hurts, of course it does, to see that she’s only been able to regain her footing after she’d let him go, and Bruce guesses that at least a small fraction of her charm today is amped up just to drive home how well she’s faring on her own, to twist the nail of guilt just a little deeper… 

But he’s happy for her, Bruce realizes, touching his glass of water to her red wine. Even through the tangle of his own anxieties, he is. Besides, she clearly hasn’t booted him out of her life completely, and he does suspect that the invitation to participate in her new project was an overture of friendship as much as anything else. He’s grateful for that.

Especially since she might have just helped him find a new direction of his own.

They part with a handshake that Selina doesn’t try to prolong. She doesn’t suggest that they meet in their works clothes later tonight, either, and Bruce greets the absence of her usual flirting with grace and stoicism that surprise him. Her parting smile is the most genuine one she’s given him all afternoon, and the truth is, the air between them seems to be clearing like it never has before. 

From the knowing look in her eye, Bruce guesses Selina is thinking along very similar lines.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she tells him when they step out of the bistro and under Gotham’s russet skies. “I know you have your hands full these days but try to remember to have some fun, okay?”

“You sound like Alfred,” Bruce complains, craning his neck to spot if any taxis are lurking in the sluggish crawl of the evening traffic. 

“Good. Alfred is a wise man.” Selina nudges him with her elbow. “I heard about what you’re trying to do with Arkham. I’d say good luck but if you ask me, they should have razed that place to the ground a long time ago.”

Bruce doesn’t say anything. These days, he isn’t all that sure he disagrees.

“I think you’re being quixotic again,” Selina tells him quietly, moving closer so Bruce can hear her over the city soundscape. “Better steer yourself for disappointment now before it’s too late.”

“Maybe,” Bruce mutters. “Maybe not.”

“You’re infuriating, I hope you realize.” Selina shoves him lightly, and Bruce turns his head just in time to catch the edge of fondness in her smile.

It warms him, and he’s encouraged to point out, “You’re the one who’s trying to build a community center in the East End. You can hardly get more Cervantes than that.”

“Doing _anything_ decent in this goddamn city is like fighting windmills,” Selina sighs. She stands quiet for a moment and then asks, “Is this what’s bothering you?”

“What?” Bruce glances down at her, letting a potential cab pass them by.

“You’ve got something on your mind,” Selina observes. “Is this about Arkham? Or is it about… the clown?”

Ah. Bruce wondered when that would turn up. He opens his mouth, but immediately Selina cuts him off.

“Because if it is about him I don’t want to hear it,” she says, bristling slightly. “Notice how I didn’t ask about him all evening? That was on purpose. I don’t want to talk about him. If we do, we’ll probably end up fighting and I don’t want to fight today, Bruce.”

“That’s…” Bruce falters for a moment, swallowing. “That’s fair,” he admits roughly. 

She nods, as much to herself as to Bruce. “As long as he stays put he’s your problem, not mine,” she whispers. “But…” she pauses, “if it’s anything else… you can talk to me. Okay? You can, and I’ll try not to be… well, I’ll try not to fuck it up.”

She means it, too, Bruce realizes, looking into her eyes. There’s a ball in his throat. He manages a quiet “Thank you” through it, and she looks away, looking, if possible, as awkward as he feels. 

But then a taxi rolls to a stop by the curb and she squares her shoulders, and shrugs off the discomfort in favor of her usual sparkle, sunset gleaming in her eyes. 

She tiptoes up to Bruce and brushes a light kiss on his cheek.

“Take care of yourself,” she tells him before patting him on the bicep and disappearing into the backseat of the cab. 

Bruce stands there on the pavement and watches as the cab carries Selina off, doubtless to another mysterious errand, and when he starts to slowly amble back towards Wayne Tower he nurses the residue flecks of warmth to carry with him up into the office. 

 

***

 

Selina’s idea for a community center is a welcome distraction and plants the seed for more ideas in Bruce’s head, but it’s not enough to take his mind off his Joker problem entirely, and by the time Bruce returns to the Manor he’s almost back to square one.

He wants to go to Joker again. Badly. And this is precisely why he can’t. Not until he figures out how he should, or can, act around him. Besides, he’s already used up his guard-free hours for the week and if he visits the clown two days in a row it _will_ raise some eyebrows. 

So he keeps his distance, and manages to go for all of three days before he caves and arranges another movie night for the two of them.

It goes peacefully, right up until the point when Joker — obviously still in high spirits after their last meeting — once again tries to knead him under the blanket. Bruce suspects it’s the thrill of doing something inappropriate under Ramirez’s watchful eye as much as any need to touch him, but he doesn’t mind, not when each surreptitious press of white toes sends voltage of sensation zapping his blood. And the terrifying thing is, Joker’s boldness must be catching, because Bruce feels a touch of reckless daring strong enough to send his own hand sneaking under Reggie.

His fingers find the curved instep of Joker’s bare foot. Gingerly, they ghost over it, careful not to tickle, and Joker’s sharp gasp — which he immediately tries to pass off as a laugh — encourages Bruce to glide the knuckles of his fingers higher, over the smooth skin around the protruding bone of the ankle.

He sketches a circle around it, mindful not to move his hand too much and attract Ramirez’s attention. Joker responds by curling and then uncurling his toes against Bruce’s thigh. Bruce risks a glance and intercepts Joker’s eye. The clown is smiling in a way that wouldn’t be out of place in a gay porn magazine, and through the rapid-fire drum of his own heart Bruce thinks, _Shit, this was a mistake._

His fingers don’t want to acknowledge that. They linger around Joker’s angle and then stroke down along the curve of the foot, slowly, by fractions of inches, until they catch on the ridge of an old scar halfway down to the toes. Intrigued, Bruce investigates, trailing the tip of his index finger over the scar’s jagged length, up and then down, imagining the shape of it, wondering how many other scars he could explore if he could let his hand wander up Joker’s long, long leg…

Joker’s toes curl into him, and he moves his hand back up to the ankle, pressing slightly in return.

 _God,_ he’s losing his mind.

It’s a jolt to discover he doesn’t really care though, not in a way that counts. Mostly Bruce feels electrified, and excited, and giddy in a way that’s entirely new to him. Mid-thirties is much too old to be acting like a schoolboy but here he is, and here Joker is, winking at Bruce like they’re a pair of horny teenagers playing footsie under the desk when the teacher isn’t watching, and the moment is a fragile bubble of clandestine awareness so sharp and clear Bruce feels like he’s under magnifying glass. 

And fine, okay, they shouldn’t be doing this. It doesn’t matter that Joker started it — Bruce should know better than to encourage him. They’re being ridiculous.

It’s been ages since Bruce had last allowed himself to be ridiculous, and maybe that’s why he keeps his hand warm over Joker’s ankle all the way to the credits.

 

***

 

Later, when Bruce thinks back to that evening, he appreciates it all the more. It was a high point, and they don’t get many of those in the best of circumstances.

In the weeks that follow, they don’t get any at all.

The disasters don’t snowball over them all at once. As usual, the thing to herald the avalanche is a single pebble, and in their case, it takes the form of a question, posed the very next time they meet and sit down to their routine game of cards. Joker seems pensive from the start that morning, quieter and less liberal with his smiles, but though Bruce notices he tries not to let it worry him.

Not until Joker asks, quiet and tight in a way that immediately spikes Bruce to alertness:

“Batsy?”

“Yes?”

“You ever think about what happens next?”

Bruce stills. He keeps a tight grip on the cards as he watches Joker’s face.

“What do you mean?”

Joker shrugs and keeps his eyes on his own cards. 

“After I leave here, what happens?”

Oh. _Oh._

Bruce tries not to glance with longing at the door as he puts his cards down and leans forward over the table, resting his hands in the middle of it. “Have you been thinking about that?” he asks, and silently congratulates himself on managing to keep his voice level even though his mind is kicking up a perfect storm. 

Joker smirks. “It’s crossed my mind,” he allows in a tone makes it clear it’s a massive understatement. He asks, “Well?”

Something dark and pointed agitates Bruce’s stomach. Joker’s eyes capture his and hold. His face is cold and guarded when he abandons all pretense and drops his cards into a careless heap, leaving them both without excuses to hide behind.

This, all of a sudden, turns the situation into a balancing act, and Bruce prays to all that is holy that he won’t misstep where it matters most. 

“Of course I have,” he says, accepting the challenge in Joker’s eyes.

“And?” Joker’s fingers drum a rapid-fire _one two three, one two three_ against the smooth surface of the table. 

Bruce works his throat. _Careful, now._

“You’ll get your freedom back,” he tries. “A new life. A fresh start —”

“Yes, yes, of course. A fresh start. How positively lovely. I absolutely cannot _wait_ for a chance to toe the line like everyone else in this drab little town until someone takes pity on me and shoots me in an alley. Funny definition of freedom you got there, Bats.”

“What’s yours?” Bruce asks, trying to move past the obvious dig at his parents; but Joker is shoving his chair back and getting to his feet, and coming to stand by the window, staring out over the grounds and the hints of Gotham beyond. His hands come up around his chest, gripping around the biceps, fingers flexing one by one and then again, and the familiarity of that sight tilts Bruce out of balance.

He has no idea what to say. He can only watch Joker’s profile in silence until Joker asks, quietly, “And in this shiny brave new world, what will I be to you?”

Oh God. “Joker —” Bruce starts, but Joker is shaking his head, his gaze still pointed out the window.

“If I’m one of them, will I matter?” he whispers, and his voice sounds like he hasn’t had a drop of water in days. “Or will I just be… another face to save. Will I be one of the shadows?”

“Joker.”

“Will I?” Joker might as well have thrown one of his knives to lodge itself right in-between the cracks of Bruce’s armor plates — the pain is much the same. “Tell me,” he demands, his fingers wrinkling the sleeves of the purple jacket. His voice goes raw. “Tell me you won’t just forget about me and find yourself a new dance partner as soon as they say I’m cured. Tell me I’m not helping you kick me to the curb by rotting here day after day.”

Bruce’s heart is racing a mile a minute, and his skin gets clammy. The weight of the suit steals his breath. He doesn’t know what to say, and his eyes zero in on the agitated twitches in Joker’s fingers. 

It’s an edge. An edge that _he’s_ brought them to, and he’s not as blind as to deny the responsibility. His actions are his own, and so are his feelings, and he realizes that what Joker’s doing right now is, essentially, asking Bruce for a reason to keep going. Bruce remembers Dr. Mulligan’s stern warning, _Don’t lead him on._ He can feel the gravity of the moment, of every single word he says right here and now. Whatever it is has to be rooted in the truth. It has to matter. And he’s nowhere near approaching ready but he has to be, because Joker needs this and, when it comes down to it, maybe so does Bruce. 

He gets out of the chair before he can talk himself out of it. He stands behind Joker and lays a hand on his shoulder. Joker tenses but doesn’t jerk away, and Bruce takes is as permission to touch his other shoulder too, and then his hands smooth down Joker’s arms, closing over two sets of tense fingers.

He whispers the only thing that comes to his mind, and the one that rings most true.

“You matter.”

Joker releases a breath. Bruce holds his. He has no words to verbalize any of this but he wants, desperately, for Joker to lean back against him so Bruce could hold him properly, and stroke his hair, and assure him that everything will be all right and he doesn’t have to worry because there is no way on Earth that Bruce would ever let him fade away, that Joker matters and will always matter, that no matter what or who he is Bruce will always, always _need_ him…

The fierceness of his own instincts surprises him, but not as much as Joker pulling away.

“I’m tired,” he says, putting distance between himself and Bruce and, effectively, shutting down whatever else might have been said. 

Bruce’s heart takes a dive, and he wonders how much of it Joker can read in his face. He tries to take a step closer, and Joker takes one back.

And so, in the end, there’s nothing for Bruce to do but leave.

 

***

 

After that, things only go downhill. 

Logically, Bruce knows that Joker has absolutely no way of knowing anything of what’s happening with the Arkham investigations, but as the GCPD starts to carry it out in earnest, he responds as if he did. His mood plummets just as Jim’s police start making arrests, and when Bruce visits him, more and more often he gets less of Joker the Entertainer and more of Joker the Prisoner, morose, detached, cynical… 

Quiet.

Joker doesn’t try to ask him about the future anymore, but Bruce can tell it sits on his mind all the same. He tries to ask what’s wrong. He gets no answers, only barbs that cut him wide open, or silence that hurts even worse. Once, Joker gets as far as to say, “I don’t like Dr. Mulligan,” but when Bruce asks him for details he purses his mouth shut and looks away. 

“It might be the meds,” Dr. Mulligan offers when Bruce asks her about it. “That and… well… the isolation. He’s never stayed in one place for so long before. It’s natural that he’s starting to feel claustrophobic.”

At her suggestion they start to arrange for another trip outside, but that’ll take time and Joker only seems to be getting worse and Bruce doesn’t know what to do. 

The only thing he can think of is more attention, and he makes a point to come to him as Wayne again on top of his regular Batman visits. He arranges another movie night, hoping that it’ll help like the last one seemed to. 

But it doesn’t. Instead of on the sofa Joker elects to sit down on the floor, by Bruce’s legs, and he judges Bruce’s choice of movie with a cruel tilt to his smirk Bruce doesn’t understand at all.

Joker doesn’t react to the goings-on on the screen with any of his usual vivacity, and if anything he seems to detach himself from it with every passing minute until he observes, quietly: 

“I couldn’t see the fireworks.” 

Bruce, who hasn’t really been paying attention to _There’s no Business Like Show Business_ himself, glances down at him. His hand rests idly on the couch a tantalizing distance from Joker’s head, and the curls call to him, and it’s all too easy to imagine breaching that distance and twining a strand around his finger. 

It’s getting too long again. He should ask the Arkham barber over soon. 

“Fireworks?” he asks, shelving the unhelpful impulse away. 

“Oh, say, can you see… ” Joker hums, tilting his head to lay it on the edge of the couch and look up at Bruce from the awkward angle. “Well, I couldn’t. That’s hardly fair, Brucie, don’t you think? It’s like Christmas all over again. The least you and Batsy can do is let me know when my favorite holidays come and go. I wouldn’t even have known it was the 4th if I hadn’t gone out to the balcony and saw just a _teensy_ little bit of the fireworks over the city. Pretty lights, oh so bright, oh so far away…” 

“I —” Bruce makes a show of looking back to the screen, curling his fingers. They itch to reach out and brush some of the strands out of Joker’s eyes. He clears his throat. “I’m sorry. They told me not to tell you.”

“Dr. Mullie did?”

“Er… yes.”

“I can’t even know what day it is?”

“Maybe they’ll let you have a calendar soon,” Bruce offers.

Joker huffs and looks away. He starts to twist his fingers where they rest on his drawn-up knees. 

“Was there a parade?” he asks after a minute or so.

“There’s always a parade.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s the same every year,” Bruce points out. 

Joker smirks. “Not when I was involved it wasn’t.”

God, isn’t that the truth. Bruce doesn’t want Joker to start reminiscing about the good old days though, so he observes, “I didn’t know you were so patriotic.”

“I’m very patriotic,” Joker assures him in a voice that’s almost comically deadpan, and he gazes up at Bruce upside-down again. “I love parades. I love fireworks. Tell me about them… sweetie.” 

His tone carries none of the affection the last word implies. Even so, Bruce tries to indulge him, and knows even as he does that he’s making a piss-poor job of it. Holidays hardly ever register for him as anything more than functions he has to show up for every once in a while, maybe make a speech, and most of the time he associates them with his villains anyway because hardly a holiday goes by without one of them trying to hijack it. Joker of course used to be the worst offender, and the thought is like a bucket of ice emptied over Bruce’s head. With everything that’s going on his obligatory Independence Day party speech was nothing more than a pesky distraction from the real work, but for Joker, he realizes now, it would have been so much more, and he didn’t even _think_ …

He feels his failure with an acute pang when Joker’s face morphs from neutral to downright unimpressed to tight with something else entirely, more sinister and elusive than Bruce can name, and his heart twists. He really wishes the guard wasn’t standing behind them so he could stroke Joker’s head and maybe ease some of the unsettling _something_ away like Joker had done for him. But he can’t do a damn thing and sits there simmering in his own helplessness while Joker plunges deeper and deeper into himself, until he says, softly, “I think you should go now, Brucie.”

His tone is distant, and there’s coldness in his eyes. Bruce nods, even though leaving is the very last thing he wants to do right now.

“Okay. Do you need anything?”

Joker doesn’t respond. He’s still staring at the ceiling. And because he’s so still, when his little finger twitches, it almost makes a sound of its own. 

Bruce glances over his shoulder at Winston, who looks pale and alarmed, clutching the cattle prod in both hands like he’s trusting it to save him from the whims of the pale demon at Bruce’s feet. Bruce wants to scream at the man to get out, but without the cape and cowl he has absolutely no authority, and the frustration nearly burns a gaping hole clean through his chest when he makes himself sit still and gently nudge Joker’s shoulder with his knee.

“Joker?”

Joker’s eyes snap to him much too fast.

“I asked if you need anything,” Bruce offers even as the hairs on the back of his neck begin to stand on end. 

Joker studies him. His eyes go colder to a dispassionate, almost clinical degree, dim in the dazzling splash of technicolor magic spewing from the screen. The garish lights ripple over his pinched face, spelling away the vivid shades of his hair and mouth, sucking vibrancy out of his clothes. Under the flashes of color and noise Joker suddenly looks drained and small, and all at once Bruce is struck by an overwhelming feeling of _Wrong_.

God, he wants to do something. He wants to grab him by the shoulder and shake off this patina of _wrongness_ until he bullies Joker’s natural colors back. He wants to ask, _Why aren’t you dancing_ because Joker _should_ be dancing, he should be up there on the floor competing with Marilyn Monroe for Bruce’s attention, twirling and sparkling and teasing Bruce with gleams of sharp white teeth, himself a human firework. 

Instead it’s like the all-singing, all-dancing spectacle is calling Joker’s bluff, or like it’s showing him everything that he could have but gave up. Bruce hates seeing him like this and even more than that, he hates that he can’t do a damn thing about it. 

And then Joker laughs at him, and the sound is all wrong too, washed out much like the rest of him. 

“Nothing you can give me, Brucie boy,” Joker whispers. He pats Bruce’s knee with all the condescension and none of the affection to soothe the blow. “Go.”

He’s still on the floor when Winston guides Bruce out of the dark room. Bruce barely manages a polite goodbye to the man before he’s rushing down to the cave and bringing up Joker’s surveillance, but Joker stays on the floor until the movie’s larger than life finale exhausts itself out and doesn’t move in the darkness that follows.

“At least it’s not a panic attack,” Alfred volunteers when he brings the tray with Bruce’s lunch down to the cave.

“No,” Bruce agrees.

In many ways, it’s so much worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on the Selina scene here - I borrowed the concept of the East End community center from the excellent "Catwoman" run by Ed Brubaker (highly recommend that you read it if you haven't yet!). You may have noticed that already but my attitude to canon is basically "cherry pick the bits I like and squash it in here in whatever order fits best" and I'm gonna stick to it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the other part! Some gory imagery in this one, and violence. 
> 
> I hope the ending will make up for it.

Bruce doesn’t know if it’s because he now knows how bad things used to be for Joker at Arkham, but especially now with his mood being this bleak, he wants to do something for him. Even if it can’t possibly make up for what happened, Bruce wants to at least make Joker’s confinement in the Manor easier, and not just because he doesn’t want Joker to start thinking of escaping. He doesn’t know what he _could_ do besides visiting and bringing him more little gifts, though; he can’t very well make Joker’s rooms bigger or let him out to tour the Manor and stretch his legs without heaps of paperwork and planning and restraints. He can’t drive him to Gotham to smell the city, which, he suspects, is what Joker might actually need. He can’t prepare a new wing for him, to introduce some variety. He can’t do much of anything at all other than what he’s been doing already, and that frustrates him almost as much as the ongoing Arkham investigation.

And that’s… saying something.

Okay, to be fair, it doesn’t start out disastrously. At first, despite Bruce’s worst expectations, the police do actually seem to be making good on their promise to evaluate what he, Dr. Mulligan, Dick and Barbara accumulated. Dr. Lancer is among the bastards Jim’s officers round up, and some of the inmates and employees, many of them influenced by Dick’s gentle encouragement during his brief stay at the Asylum, have decided to come forward with their stories. A court psychiatrist is appointed to collect written or recorded testimonies from the patients to assess how valid those testimonies may be, and some of them are deemed competent and believable enough to stand in the witness box if they so choose. 

Thankfully, no one seems to want to collect a similar testimony from Joker. 

“The official story is he’s not competent to stand trial. Unofficially? No judge or jury in their right minds would take the clown’s side in anything,” Jim says, and like it or not, Bruce has to agree. “We’re actually wondering if we should show any of those recordings you got me. Of… of him. For all we know, that might actually sway the jury in the perps’ favor.”

 _That_ , Bruce doesn’t want to believe, not after he’s seen Dr. Mulligan’s tapes with his own eyes. But he has to concede that it is better this way. It means that Joker won’t have to talk to any lawyers or psychiatrists about his experiences, and they won’t have to drag poor Dmitri into it either. Joker’s story will remain private, at least for now. Lancer’s misconduct against Joker is far from the only charge they found on the doctor and it should be enough to ensure some sort of punishment, especially in light of the accusations the other patients — including high profile ones, like Riddler, Harvey, Ivy and Croc — and his own colleagues leveled at him. 

Or so Bruce hopes.

Even so, several times over the course of the investigation Bruce very nearly breaks his promise to stay out of it and crashes into Lancer’s apartment and later his cell to demand the truth. The only reason he doesn’t is the reproach in Dick’s eyes as he reminds him, “Justice, not vengeance, remember?” 

Bruce never actually says it, but he’s thankful that Dick decided to stay, at least until the case is closed. Jason draws more and more distant with every passing day, and Bruce…

… needs the reminders. 

Jeremiah Arkham, probably to forestall any investigations into his own complicity in the horrors of his institution, not only cooperates with the police but personally invites the APA’s Ethics Committee to weigh in on the accusations and conduct a thorough inspection of the Asylum. That doesn’t convince Bruce of his innocence at all but it’ll likely mean that he’ll get to keep his position as head of the facility when the dust settles. Which, in the long run, only means that Bruce will have to make his own involvement in the day-to-day operations of the Asylum more personal to keep a closer eye on him. He already has a few ideas as to how to go about it. In the power vacuum that results after the arrests, Aaron Cash is promoted from Sergeant to Head of Security, and Dick’s reassurances that Cash is “a good guy, honestly, a bit broken but actually trying his best,” Bruce lets himself feel a little more optimistic that justice might actually be served.

Right up until Dr. Lancer gets released without a trial.

“He and some of the other doctors we nabbed, turns out they’ve got friends in the D.A.’s office,” Jim tells him grimly on the GCPD roof, running a hand through gray hair. “They dropped the charges. Lack of evidence. They’re gonna carry on with some of the guards but most of the doctors will get a pat on the wrist and a transfer and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

There’s very little Bruce can do about it, too, because that very same night Poison Ivy decides to explode a wall in her cell. Bruce is on his way to Lancer’s apartment when Barbara tells him about the breakout and by the time he makes it to Arkham Ivy is long gone, all hopes of tracking her dissolving into the wind whooshing into her now-empty cell.

And that’s not the only bad news.

“She’s actually helping her escape,” Cash murmurs, standing next to Bruce as they watch the surveillance footage from Ivy’s cell. “What the fuck was she _thinking_?”

“I’d wager she wasn’t,” Bruce replies, rewinding to the moment when Dr. Quinzel steps in front of Ivy’s cell, uses a security badge to open the door and presents Ivy with a potted plant. The footage has no sound so there’s no telling what the two women say to one another, but the sharp, pointed darkness in Dr. Quinzel’s face gives Bruce a pretty clear idea. The young doctor doesn’t flinch when Ivy manipulates the plant to grow and forces its tendrils into the mortar, and when she steps aside from the exploding rubble, it’s out of pragmatic self-preservation rather than anything close to fear.

“Here,” Cash says, pointing at the screen. “Isley was going to leave her.”

Bruce nods. On the screen, it does look like Ivy’s first impulse is to bolt without sparing her rescuer a second thought, but then Dr. Quinzel shouts something after her, giving her pause. For a moment the two women look at one another like two opponents about to go toe to toe in a boxing match, seizing one another up, waiting for the other to blink.

Then, in a move that shocks Bruce even on his second viewing, Ivy extends an engorged leaf for Dr. Quinzel to step onto, and the doctor does, shrugging out of her lab coat and letting it drop to the floor. She takes Ivy’s hand. 

They disappear into the night together.

“I don’t get it,” Cash whispers, shaking his head. “That’s not — that’s nothing like Harleen. She’s _good_. She would never do something like that.”

Bruce has his doubts. He remembers the shrewd, sharp woman from the parking lot, and remembers the way she looked at Joker. If she knew anything about Dr. Lancer and what he did, or what he enabled, and if she learned about him going free…

A horrible suspicion crashes against Bruce and his eyes widen.

_Oh God. Oh no, no, no._

He dashes out of the control room and down the corridors to the car as fast as he can and breaks every speed limit twice over on a mad race back to the city, but even then, he’s much too late. When he gets to Lancer’s apartment he finds the man already dead on the floor lying in a pool of his own blood and saliva, his face an ugly blotch of purple, his tongue sticking out, his eyes bulging out in terror and pain. There’s angry red vine imprints bruised into his throat which point to asphyxiation — and a slow one at that — but Bruce also counts shallow knife slashes across the man’s face and chest, made with the intent to hurt rather than kill. There’s no weapon. Not even leftover leaves scattered over the floor, but there don’t need to be. The vine marks are more than enough to pinpoint a suspect, and the knife wounds… 

Bruce gazes down at the corpse and tries to determine how he feels about this.

Cold, maybe. But mostly hollow. Blank, as though his subconscious is for once trying to protect him from overflowing and drowning under the conflict. Death of criminals hardly ever gives him a sense of closure, or even security, usually it’s the very opposite, but now, for once, the sight of it triggers only a vague echo of the dull storm of grief that usually follows.

He wonders what it says about him. He wonders what it means. He wonders if deep down, there isn’t a dark, sick twinge of…

… satisfaction.

 _Justice_ , he reminds himself. Not vengeance. It’s important to remember that. 

He looks at Lancer’s corpse, and here and now he isn’t all that sure the difference is as clear as he wants to believe. 

“You’re going to have to tell him now,” Jason observes when Bruce finally reports over the comm. 

_Yes_ , Bruce thinks. Joker deserves to know. 

For better or worse.

“We’ve got another problem too,” Barbara points out through the radio when Bruce is in the car on his way to scour the city for signs of Ivy. “That Dr. Quinzel? She knows where you keep the clown.”

Bruce’s stomach lurches when he realizes that Barbara’s right. Christ, and not only that, she actually was there when they first brought Joker in. She's seen all of Bruce’s security measures. 

_Shit._

“You don’t think she’d try to break him out, do you?” Dick’s voice chimes in, clearly worried. “Ivy’s never been friends with Joker and Harleen can’t do much on her own. She’s just a psychiatrist.”

“Crane was _just_ a psychiatrist,” Barbara points out. “And Pamela Isley was _just_ a botanist. Never underestimate Gotham’s ability to turn decent people into monsters.”

“But I mean… I know Harleen,” Dick insists. “She was one of the nice ones. She tried new methods and treated the patients like people. Nisha Mulligan trained her. Sure, she could get a bit radical and she had this thing for the Joker, and she does have a mean streak but…”

“For all we know, she was just a willing accessory to murder. That’s a bit more than a mean streak, Nightwing.” 

“We don’t know why she decided to go rogue,” Jason tries. “Maybe it was just to get Lancer, and in that case she may already be in the wind. Or maybe Ivy decided to kill the doctor all on her own and ditched Quinzel somewhere as soon as they were out of Arkham. We don’t know if they’re even still together.”

“One of you should head back to the Manor just in case,” Barbara suggests. 

Bruce is just about to say that he’s on his way, but Dick, as though sensing his urgency, beats him to it. 

“I’ll do it,” he declares, “I’m closer. Batman, you should keep looking for them out in the city with Robin. I can keep an eye on the clown.” 

“I’ll see if I can track Quinzel’s phone or credit card records,” Barbara volunteers. “Someone should probably check her apartment before the cops swarm all over it, if they haven’t already.”

“Robin,” Bruce commands, and Jason replies with a prompt “I’m on it.”

“You’re not going to fight me on the clown thing?” Dick asks Bruce over a private channel once the others disconnect.

Bruce very much wants to. But he also knows that he has a better chance of tracking Ivy in the city than Dick does, and tells him as much. He adds, “Just keep him safe.”

Dick doesn’t comment on the tone of his voice. “It has to be about Lancer,” he muses instead. “Harleen hated the bastard. She must have gone ballistic when she learned he got off scot-free.”

“That’s what I think, too,” Bruce agrees darkly. “Hopefully his death will be enough to appease her.”

“Yeah,” Dick murmurs, “let’s hope.”

But he doesn’t seem convinced and when it comes down to it, neither is Bruce. Barbara’s right. Gotham has a certain propensity for twisting people’s minds into her own image, and Harleen Quinzel has been a red flag ever since Bruce first met her. 

None of this looks good.

 

***

 

In the end, the only trace of Ivy and Quinzel they manage to find is a robbery in a Party City store of all places. Bruce is reluctant to pin it on the two women until eye witnesses claim that they saw them breaking in and leaving almost immediately, and the security cameras confirm it. The escapees didn’t even bother to cut the cables so they wouldn’t be caught on camera, and that worries Bruce even more than the fact that apparently they’re still working together, or at least were for the robbery.

There’s three items missing. A cartoonishly giant mallet, a set of theatrical-quality face paint and a Halloween costume the store records list as “Sexy Harlequin, adult female.”

Bruce remembers what Joker told him about the doctor saying that her name sounded like “harlequin,” and his sense of dread only thickens just as the night seems to do all around him. 

_Not another one_ , he prays on his way home, _please not another one._ Gotham has enough of costumed horrors as is. The last thing anyone needs is another one for the collection, especially one that seems to be taking her inspiration from a very specific source.

Joker has been missing from Gotham’s crime scene for a long time now. His legend is still alive and well on the streets which breed no shortage of clown wannabes, but maybe, now that the gang wars seems to have eased, the city decided that wasn’t enough. Maybe Gotham ruled that it was time to put someone in his place. 

Bruce still hopes that’s not the case, but things only get grimmer when he finally arrives home and Dick shows him the sad remains of his security sensors crushed between what could only be Ivy’s vines, just beyond the walls protecting the Wayne property from outsiders.

“They’ve been here, no question about that,” Dick says. “I didn’t see them but it seems they perched over there for a while, in the branches. It’s a good hiding spot, especially if you can manipulate the foliage to hide you. That, and. Uh. They’d get a good view of the clown’s wing from here.”

Bruce investigates the spot Dick indicates and has to agree. There’s clear signs of intrusion in the foliage and in the tree above, and flowery paths marking the trail of Ivy’s footsteps. Ivy could have easily made it so that none of it would be visible after they left, and again, her carelessness worries Bruce down to his bones. It’s like the two women are making a statement and _want_ to be seen, and in Gotham, that’s never a good sign. 

Still…

“They didn’t try to break him out?” Bruce confirms and Dick shrugs, looking helpless. 

“Not that I know of. It seems they just sat there and watched him for a while. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Did he see them?”

“No idea. The guards kept a close eye on him and when I asked them they said he didn’t act any different than normal.”

They need to update their security. Badly. In the meantime, Bruce gets Alfred and Jason on setting up new sensors around the place and goes to interrogate the guards, who can only offer him a rehash of what Dick’s already told him. 

“Nothing happened,” Carter insists. “We didn’t even know anything was going on until your ex-Robin came in told us to be careful. Here, see for yourself.”

He does a quick fast-forward through the footage from the entire night, and indeed, nothing extraordinary seems to be happening. Joker exercised for a bit, took a shower, paced around the parlor, swung aimlessly from the columns of his bed and then sat down to slowly rub body butter into his skin. He didn’t smile once through this entire process and looked lethargic the whole time, but that has recently been becoming the new norm for him.

There is one moment that Bruce catches and asks Carter to slow down: at one point during the night Joker went out onto the balcony and stood there for about fifteen minutes or so. The timestamp of the recording more or less corresponds to the estimated time when Ivy, possibly with Dr. Quinzel, sat outside the wall, but in the end Joker does nothing, only stands there and looks, resting his hands on the marble. Eventually he retreats back to bed and lies down on his back to stare up at the ceiling, and that seems to be it. The cameras outside, once Bruce checks, haven’t caught any suspicious movements either. As far as anyone knows there has been no contact between Joker and the two women, and that… 

… Bruce has no idea what it means. 

 

***

 

The following days bring no answers. Barbara’s report proves that Dr. Quinzel hasn’t used her credit cards or bank account once since the escape, and the doctor’s e-mails, once Barbara hacks into them, reveal nothing about her plans. There’s very little in her apartment in the way of clues, maybe except for copious amounts of books on criminal psychology and, as Jason reports with disgust, “A fucking Joker scrapbook.” Her phone stays silent too, her family back in New York claim they haven’t heard from her and city surveillance doesn’t offer much beyond fake leads. There’s no shortage of attractive young blond women in Gotham and trying to catch her in the crowds at this point is an exercise in futility.

Ivy is staying quiet for now, too. There’s no trace of her in her usual haunts, which means that she might have moved beyond city limits. It’s not exactly a surprise — Ivy often likes to take her time recuperating in forests, somewhere with fresh air and sunshine and clean water. She’ll make her move soon enough, Bruce has no doubt about that, but the waiting drives him out of his mind. 

“Can’t help you there, sorry,” Selina says when he asks her about Ivy next time they meet to discuss her project. “Ivy isn’t exactly a huge fan of mine. Besides…” she shoots Bruce a sharp look, “I’m no snitch. I like you, but I’m _not_ your sidekick.”

“Noted.” Bruce breathes out, sitting back in his chair.

There’s nothing for it but wait.

 

***

 

His instinct is to procrastinate on telling Joker about Lancer, which is how he knows he has to do it quickly. Stalling won’t get him anywhere and he does mean to interrogate Joker, subtly if he can, if the clown noticed anything strange on the night of Ivy’s escape. 

Bruce still waits until his next unsupervised hour, which is scheduled for two days later. Not that the extra time helps him any. His lines may be prepared but nothing else about him is, and stepping into Joker’s rooms that morning in full Batman regalia he feels that he might as well be naked for all the good the armor does.

The anxiety gets so bad that when Joker pokes his head from out of the gym and tells him, grouchily, to go away because he’s not in the mood, Bruce feels tempted to comply. But he can’t. If he puts it off now he’ll keep sitting on the information until it blows up in his face, and more importantly, Joker deserves the relief the news of Lancer’s death might bring him. 

That, of course, means that Bruce finally has to own up to investigating Joker’s Arkham history behind his back, but that’s… fine. He can do it. He’s a grown man and he can take responsibility for his own decisions. 

The resolve lasts him two steps, maybe three. His “No” seems to use up all what’s left of it. 

At least Joker seems curious, if the tilt of his brow is any indication, and condescends to emerge into the parlor. He gestures to Bruce’s usual chair and takes up residence in his own. When Bruce remains standing, he turns to face him but doesn’t say a word.

“I need to talk to you about something important,” Bruce says.

Joker nods. “Obviously, or you wouldn’t be badgering me.”

“It’s about Arkham.”

Joker’s eyes narrow dangerously. “Batsy,” he says, “from one showman to another, I do appreciate your talent for physical suspense, but honey, trust me, don’t try to build it up with words. It’s not exactly your forte.”

“I’m not putting on a show,” Bruce protests, but Joker waves his hand dismissively.

“We’re always putting on a show,” he corrects Bruce impatiently, “so please, do be so kind and give me my lines already.”

Bruce works his throat. He scrambles for the lines he’s prepared, but they unravel in his hands. 

_He’s dropped hints for you,_ he reminds himself. _He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t want you to investigate. Spit it out already._

“Dr. Lancer is dead,” he blurts out, and watches Joker’s face.

For a moment, it betrays nothing. Then Joker looks away and his fingers begin to dance over the table. Bruce gives him time even though his heart beats loud enough to serve as a clock, punctuating every passing second with a painful _thump, thump, thump._

“A shame,” Joker says eventually, “I was rather looking forward to sending him off into the Great Everlasting myself. Who did it?”

“Ivy,” Bruce whispers. “She… may have had an accomplice.”

“Pam is out?” Joker only seems mildly interested in the news, still tapping his fingers on the table, still looking away. “How marvelous. Do give her my best next time you two butt heads, won’t you?”

Either he really didn’t make any contact with the escapees or he’s putting on an act, and there is no way for Bruce to be sure which it is. So he decides to finally move to the meat of the matter.

“Joker,” he says, cold sweat beading under the cowl, “I know what they did to you at Arkham.”

The tapping stops. “Really,” Joker whispers.

“Yes.” Bruce clears his throat. “I… saw some of the recordings. And I — I talked to Dmitri.”

Once again Joker keeps him waiting, stretching the moment until it’s ready to burst, until Bruce wants to grab him by the shoulders and force Joker to face him, and shout, _Say something!_. Then, he sighs through his teeth and locks a hand on the back of his neck, pressing in. “I see,” he murmurs. “And how is the lovely old card, mmm? ”

“He’s in Blackgate, much like most of your gang,” Bruce tells him, hurting with the tension. “But that’s not the —”

“So you went over there for a little chat, did you? Had yourself a bit of a chinwag? No wonder I could feel my ears burning! That’s nice, Bats. That’s splendid. I’m sure dear old Dmitri enjoyed the company. He _is_ a dear, isn’t he? A great big cuddlebear with an accent. And let me guess,” Joker’s voice climbs louder, higher with every word, “he told you a nice little story? About yours truly, and all the mean things the big bad men did to me once upon a time? And now you think you know everything, is that right?”

“Not everything,” Bruce says, “but I know enough. And I’m sorry. I never should have —”

“Listen to the man!” Joker claps, springing to his feet. He begins to pace from one end of the room to the other, gesticulating, with only the sofa between them. “Ladies and gentlemen, isn’t he marvelous? Such heroism! Such tortured regret! You’re positively Byronic, Batsy ol’ pal! Why, I think I might swoon!”

“Joker.”

“In fact, in fact, dearest heart of mine, you’re so magnificent, in fact, that I’m almost loath to disabuse you of your righteous convictions. Regret suits you so very well, my love. And guilt as well! I can’t decide which looks better on you. No! No, I shall not, I will not choose, you cannot make me!”

Bruce glances at the nearest camera and mouths, _The pills._ He only hopes Alfred’s lip-reading skills are as polished as his shoes. Then he looks back to Joker, who’s stopped pacing now and is glaring at him with eyes so bright and cold that it feels like dipping his entire body in an ice-hole.

“So that’s how you want it to be,” Joker hisses. “You, the hero, me, the damsel? Is that what you want? Is that our new script? And what if I told you that I dangled that carrot in front of you just to watch you run into a wall, and none of what you think you _know_ is true?”

“Stop that,” Bruce pleads. “There’s nothing wrong with needing help. It’s okay to say they hurt you.”

“Is that right? Is that what you think? And what if I told you I ordered Dmitri to lie?”

Bruce closes his eyes and takes a fortifying breath. “I wouldn’t believe you,” he says slowly. “Even you can’t plan this sort of thing a year in advance.”

“Are you sure about that, Batsy? Are you absolutely sure?” Joker jumps onto the sofa and kneels on it, leaning on the backrest so he’s facing Bruce. “Or maybe I didn’t order Dmitri to lie. Maybe I told the sordid tale of woe to my Arkham henchman and _he_ lied for me to poor loyal Dmitri so he’d have no qualms about helping me kill those mooks for entirely unrelated reasons! After all, there’s no proof, is there? Nothing! Nada! Gar nichts! And now all the witnesses are dead. There’s no telling just what happened in that basement, if anything at all! Have you considered that, Bats? Or were you so eager to play the avenger and shove me into your new script that the possibility never even crossed your pointy-eared mind?”

“You don’t have to do this,” Bruce tries. “Please. I’m trying to help.”

“I never asked you to help me!”

“Then why all the hints? I saw how you reacted when I brought up Lancer,” Bruce insists. “You kept mentioning… things. I think you _wanted_ me to look deeper into it and punish those responsible.”

“Or maybe I sicced you on them just for kicks,” Joker counter sharply. “Do you honestly think I’m not able to take my own vengeance?”

“That’s not what I —”

Many things happen all at once. Bruce hardly even registers Joker moving — fast, terrifyingly fast, bounding across the couch, a blur of white, a hand rising to strike — before he feels a flare of pain across his chin and his head flies to the side, and he staggers, and Joker kicks at his shins to unbalance him and send him sprawling on the floor.

“You’ll never know what really happened,” Joker hisses, climbing on top of him, straddling him, pinning Bruce’s shoulders down with his knees. He leans down so his breath ghosts over Bruce’s mouth. “Never. I hated Lancer, sure, and I killed the others, but what if it’s not at all for the reasons you think? What if it’s only because I’m every inch the petty monster people say I am? You’re so eager to see me as some sort of victim, Batsy, and you’re so _sure_ you’ve got all the answers. Well, let me tell you this: maybe they did rape me. Maybe they didn’t. No one can tell you the truth but me, and guess what: I never will. Ever. No matter how much you think you know, you’ll always, _always_ have this nagging bit of doubt in you, and you’ll always doubt _me_.” 

“Get off of me,” Bruce orders, trying to keep still. “Now.”

“No.”

“Joker.”

“No. You’re going to have to make me.”

And Bruce looks into his eyes — feverish, the pupils contracted, the madness he’s somehow managed to compartmentalize away staring right back. And he knows that Joker means it. This time around, he’ll only get one way out, and Joker is done playing. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Bruce tries anyway, knowing that he’ll have to.

“Here’s the thing, _darling_ ,” Joker purrs, leaning over him, hair sweeping over Bruce’s chin, filling Bruce’s nose with the smell of his shampoo and soap and acid. “I don’t care.”

He sticks his tongue out and licks a long stripe from the corner of Bruce’s mouth up to the cowl’s eye. And something in Bruce…

Snaps.

His fist flies to connect with Joker’s jaw. A sickening crunch tells him the blow landed, and suddenly the weight pinning him down is gone, and Joker is laughing himself into hysteria over a bloodied mouth.

“Very good!” he gasps from the floor. “Excellent! Let’s have another!”

He jumps to his feet and lunges, and this time around, Bruce is ready for him. He blocks Joker’s punch and twists his arm, and Joker slashes at his face, and Bruce moves with him, and pushes back, and Joker retreats only to advance again, punch, dodge, kick, hit, bite, swerve. Punch-block-push. Push-punch-block. 

One, two, three. One, two, three.

“Good,” Joker pants, grinning with blood smeared on his teeth. “Let’s dance.”

He spins to kick at Bruce’s face. Bruce catches his foot mid-air, twists it and tugs, tripping Joker, who only laughs harder and kicks to freedom until he’s ready to lunge again. 

And Bruce doesn’t say it out loud but in the privacy of his mind, he thinks, _Yes, let’s._

He’s _missed_ this, he realizes distantly, like a voice underwater as his body glides on muscle memory and a rhythm that’s almost hypnotic in its familiarity. God, he’s missed this. It’s been so long since they’ve done this. Since their feelings for one another could be narrowed down to pain and blood, so they could pretend it wasn’t complicated. So long, and yet when Joker’s fingernails fly at him and Bruce ducks under them it feels like no time has passed at all. Joker punches, and he punches back, and his consciousness soars somewhere above the both of them, disconnected and somewhat bemused, but at the same time everything around him is sharper and clearer than it’s been in months. The stale summer air from the open windows. The copper taste of blood on his mouth. The smell of citrus, and sweat, when Joker once again slithers much too close. The thrilling pain of hitting too hard, and knowing that Joker can take it and give back as good as he gets. The heightened awareness of danger, and knowing beyond any shadow of doubt that they’re both, in this single moment, for this one single heartbeat, alive.

They can’t escape all the complications in the long run. They can’t pretend that this will make anything simpler. Not with the ugly rage in Joker’s body, not with the desperation between them, not with all the things that have gone on unsaid for far too long. But even knowing that, Bruce can also understand the need to distract both of them from the specter of Arkham, and to at least _try_ to recapture what used to be. 

And so when Joker jumps out of Bruce’s reach and turns to run, Bruce runs after him. 

It’s when the fight spills into the gym that he notices Joker’s bracelet flaring into alarm, and he yells at the cameras, “No! Turn it off!”

“Batman —” Dick’s voice tries to argue, but Bruce insists, “Turn it off right _now!_ ”

Joker tries to launch himself onto the trampoline and somersaults onto one of the mattresses lining the floor, laughing breathlessly. Bruce jumps after him and is just a hair’s width too late to catch his ankle. Joker kicks him in the face so hard Bruce sputters blood, and pushes the hug machine at Bruce, and lunges back into the parlor. His bracelet is still blinking. 

“I can handle this,” Bruce manages, sputtering and wiping his mouth on his glove. He staggers to his feet, kicking the hug machine back into its corner. “Turn that damned thing off.”

“Well, if you’re sure…” Dick sounds skeptical, but Bruce hardly even registers his reply at all. He’s already rushing after Joker, and has to duck from a book flying straight at his head. 

“Come and get me, baby,” Joker taunts, and darts into the bedroom, laughing all the while.

When Bruce gets there, he only has a split second’s warning before Joker’s feet are slamming into the side of his head. The bastard’s latched himself onto one of the bed columns and swung around to kick him, and when Bruce staggers back with ears ringing and black spots dancing in front of his vision, Joker swings himself back again, and lands on the other side of the bed. He’s panting, and blood gushes from his mouth and nose, and looks more alive than he had in weeks, maybe even months.

“Oh, I missed this,” he croons, echoing Bruce’s own thoughts. “Feels good, doesn’t it, Bats? Maybe that’s the way to go. Maybe I should just swing it back to Wonderland and let things go back to how they were. Maybe then you’d respect me again.”

“I respect —” Bruce starts, but then Joker is flipping over towards him across the bed with his fists swinging.

Bruce avoids the first punch and blocks the second. Joker twists to his feet and locks his other fist with Bruce’s, and they grunt as they each try to overpower the other, feet sliding over the carpet.

“Joker,” Bruce pants, “that’s _enough_.”

“You don’t mean that,” Joker counters, laughing. “Look at all the fun we’re having!”

But his eyes belie that, and so does the deadly edge to his laughter. This isn’t only about fun for him, and Bruce feels cold, and he realizes a second too late that he shouldn’t be paying this close attention to Joker’s eyes — not when there are his legs to contend with.

He regrets that in the very next blink when Joker steps away, tilting Bruce off balance, then grabs his head in both hands and drives his sharp knee into Bruce’s gut as hard as he can. The armor absorbs most of the blow but Bruce’s stomach still explodes in pain, and a second later so does his head and Joker jams his elbow down onto the back of it.

Right. This may have been fun, but playtime’s officially over. 

When Joker tries to climb one of the bed columns and launch himself across the bed again Bruce catches him around the middle and pries him away, then throws him back into the wall. Joker’s back crashes against it with a painful thud, but before he can fall to the floor, Bruce catches him by the front of his tank top and pins him against the wall, then blocks Joker’s punches, locks both of Joker’s wrists in one hand and bodily slams him into the wall. 

They pant into one another, gasping each other’s air, their bloodied faces no further apart than the width of a thumb.

And Joker is hard. Bruce doesn’t need to glance down to feel the erection tenting his sweatpants where Bruce’s thigh pushes his legs apart, and he wants to swear because _he’s_ getting hard too only the design of his codpiece was never meant to accommodate anything like that. It fucking hurts, and he barely pays attention through the rush in his ears and the cloying swirl in his mind, and the heat spilling everywhere, everywhere, thick like honey. Joker’s eyes are rapidly darkening with lust, his pupils blown, darting between Bruce’s right eye to his left. His tongue peeks out to taste the blood on his own mouth. 

And, _God_ , Bruce wants it on his. So fucking much.

“Enough,” he whispers, Joker’s shallow breath puffing into his face, “enough now.”

“This is… cozy,” Joker pants, mouth stretching into a razor-sharp grin. “Isn’t it? Aren’t you… excited?”

He rocks his hips. Bruce can’t feel much of anything through the armor but they’re pressed so close together, Joker’s cock trapped against Bruce’s thigh, that all Joker has to do is move and Bruce’s imagination does the rest. It doesn’t help that for just a blink Joker’s face smooths out into pleasure before he’s all lethal sharpness again, and _Oh God,_ it’s all Bruce can do not to grab his hips and move them himself and kiss and kiss and kiss him —

“No one dances with you like I do,” Joker whispers, leaning his face closer so the heat in his cheeks nuzzles against Bruce’s skin. “Say it, Batsy. No one.”

“Joker…”

“ _Say it_.”

Bruce gulps. He closes his eyes. “No one,” he whispers, and his hand slips from Joker’s shoulder to his waist, squeezing through the thin tank top. 

“That’s right.” Joker’s lips move against his cheek. “Good boy. And no one ever will. Because I’m not a damsel. I’m not one of _them_. I killed those men, Batsy. I killed a whole lot of people, and I _liked_ it. I’m a killer, and I’m ugly, and no matter what happens I’ll never let you forget that, got it? If you want me…” He rocks his hips again, bloodied teeth grazing over Bruce’s cheek, and Bruce’s fist closes over his hip hard enough to bruise, “you’re gonna have to take _all of me._ ”

For a moment, Bruce honestly thinks Joker will kiss him. Or maybe he doesn’t think at all. Maybe he’s too delirious for anything as coherent as that. But he does register a cold jolt of fear when instead of Joker’s lips touching his own he feels fingers prying into his mouth, and dropping something onto his tongue before they retreat, and when he focuses on Joker again none of his own desire is reflected in Joker’s face anymore.

Instead, Joker’s eyes are cold.

“That’s one of the lovely pills you like to feed me so much,” he says in a cool, collected voice, tip of his finger caressing Bruce’s chin. He leans in again to whisper conspiratorially, “I’ve been saving some of them.”

 _How_ , Bruce want to ask, but Joker’s hand is closing his mouth, and he smiles with all the sweetness of a shark about to feast.

“Now be a good bat and swallow for your uncle J,” he purrs. “And then… we’ll be even. Unless you don’t want to,” he retreats, rests his head against the wall and lets his smile drop. “Unless you think that you’d rather not walk the walk with me, in which case maybe drop me back at Arkham and we’ll forget this entire sorry business. But if you’re serious… if you want to keep going… I need you to prove it.”

And Bruce knows what this is about. It’s punishment. For going behind Joker’s back, but also for all the uncertainty, anxiety and sacrifice, for all the mistakes, for changing the script and putting Joker in this situation. 

Punishment, and also commitment. A statement. They’re in this together, or not at all.

Bruce doesn’t know which pill Joker selected for him, but in the end, they’re all tailored specifically for Joker and his unique physiognomy. For anyone else, the effects could be disastrous, but Joker probably knows that all too well. He’s waiting to see what Bruce does.

Together… or not at all.

They look into each other’s eyes.

And Bruce swallows the pill.

“Good,” Joker whispers as his eyes narrow, “enjoy that.” 

He leans in to kiss Bruce’s cheek. His lips move against his skin when he says, “Now get out.”

He pushes Bruce away, and Bruce doesn’t protest. He starts to move. The effects of the pill don’t hit all at once, but when he’s crossing the parlor he can already feel his heart rate speeding up, his stomach churning uneasily, his hands beginning to shake…

Dick is waiting for him beyond the door, and when Bruce staggers out, he says, “Med bay. Now.”

Bruce can’t belie that. Mostly because there’s a sharp heave, and he has to turn away, and throws up.

It doesn’t stop there. The nausea stays with him even after that and he has to let Dick guide him down to the cave, where Alfred gets busy tending to him, checking his vitals, making sure he doesn’t need a detox. Dick hovers behind them through the entire process, and Jason is nowhere to be seen. It’s just one pill and thankfully the effect isn’t life-threatening but it’s enough to decommission Bruce for an hour, and he lies there sweating and being sick and fighting the spin in his eyes.

“That was moronic,” Dick judges quietly, sitting by Bruce’s makeshift bed. “Why would you even… Jesus Christ, Bruce… He could have killed you.”

Bruce closes his eyes and says nothing. He can’t explain any of it. Not in a way that would make Dick understand. Can’t explain about power, about agency, about control, about challenge… about punishment, and being able to take what he himself dishes out. About balance. About rhythm. About ugliness, and being fucked up _together_.

He isn’t sure he understands any of it himself. 

But it’s not about understanding. It’s about feeling, and knowing, and _getting it_ in a way that has nothing to do with rationality. That’s how it’s always been between them. That’s how it’s always going to be. 

_If you want me, you’re gonna have to take all of me._

… Yeah, Bruce wants him. 

God help him, Bruce wants _all_ of him, and he wants to prove it. He wants to commit.

Swallowing the pill was one thing. 

Now he needs something bigger.

 

***

 

The idea comes to him when he’s on enforced bedrest, trying to sleep off the events of the morning and mostly succeeding in short, restless naps that leave him more exhausted than before. 

He likes the idea. He thinks it might get across what he can’t, as of yet, quite put in words.

He gets on arranging things as soon as he’s officially cleared to be mobile again, and a week later, at five minutes to midnight, he steps into Joker’s rooms for the first time since their fight, ready for a fresh start.

If Joker is surprised to see him, he doesn’t let it show. He only asks, “What’s it gonna be this time?”

“The balcony,” Bruce tells him, “come on.”

He goes out into the warm late August night without looking to see if Joker follows, counting silently.

He doesn’t turn when he hears soft footsteps behind him. Joker’s silhouette is a green-white-purple shimmer on the edge of his vision, and Bruce is too nervous to look at him properly.

His heart is speeding up, and he tries to keep it down as he breathes and waits. 

They’ve crossed a bridge. And he is about to send it up in flames.

“Batsy, what’s going on?” Joker asks, sounding just a touch unsettled. “You seem… manic. And it’s _me_ telling you that.”

“You don’t want to know how I’ve been doing?” Bruce asks, mostly to cover up the nervous knot in his stomach. 

“I knew you’d be all right,” Joker whispers. “I know you.”

“Well,” Bruce takes a deep breath, “I know you, too. And I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“A… surprise.”

It’s down to seconds now. Bruce really hopes the team he hired doesn’t fuck this up.

He turns to Joker. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Happy 4th of July.”

Two heartbeats later the first whistle of a rocket tearing through the sky disturbs the piece of the Manor grounds, and Bruce lets himself breathe even when the bang that comes next seems to explode inside his chest. The supernova of color first rips a whole in the night then streaks down onto the woods in a gentle sizzling purple rain, and before it can fizzle out, the sky lights up in another explosion, and then another, splash after splash after splash of light, on and on until there’s hardly a fleck of black left. 

And Bruce doesn’t actually remember a time when he liked fireworks. Even as a kid he wasn’t overly fond of them and preferred to watch the bright displays from a distance where the crack-flash-bang wouldn’t split his skull from the inside. And then, after Crime Alley, the bangs always sounded a little too close to gunfire for comfort.

But none of that matters now, because Joker does like fireworks. Just as he likes everything that’s as big and bright and loud as himself.

Bruce will be damned if he lets him lose any more of his color.

Still, he only gets enough courage to actually look at Joker a few minutes into the display, but when he does, he cannot look away. The expression of shocked, naked wonder captures him even more than the spectacle in the sky does, and perhaps that’s fine because he can watch the fireworks as they reflect in Joker’s wide-open eyes anyway and that’s so much more captivating. And so is the ripple of light dripping down his pale gaunt face, and the shadow-light-shadow-light play in his hair, and the dark contours of his half-open mouth, and shit, Bruce is in love. He’s so in love he aches with it right down the middle. 

_Accept this_ , he pleads silently, _accept me_.

He thinks he’s already accepted Joker, and everything he is, a long time ago.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there watching Joker watch the fireworks and feeling utterly, absurdly tender-raw, but it must have been a while because when Joker finally turns his head to face him, his eyes shimmer like they’re wet. 

Joker mouths, _Thank you_.

His fingers breach the distance to fit between Bruce’s.

And Bruce swallows, and nods. He holds Joker’s hand.

“We’re going to have to talk, you and I,” Joker whispers.

“Yeah,” Bruce agrees. “But not tonight.”

“Okay. Not tonight.”

Then Joker turns his head back up to the sky to watch the fireworks, and with some difficulty, so does Bruce, and neither of them lets go until the last of the fireworks twinkle and blink out into the night.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God I am so nervous *bites nails* One huge scene for you today, I planned to add more in this chapter but then I realized the tonal shifts between this passage and the scenes that follow would be too drastic. And anyway, enough happens here for 10k. The good news is that a lot of the next section is already written so hopefully you won't have to wait too long! And I hope you'll enjoy this development. 
> 
> Before you do though, please take some time to appreciate this [stunning piece of art for chapter 11 by Mellie](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/153274666693/melamungous-mellie-art-then-joker-turns), those lovely [posters](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/152335902523/thisclownwomen-half-way-across-fancover-movie) for the fic by [thisclownwomen](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/152335852978/thisclownwomen-half-way-across-fancover-fic-by), and even more [posters](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/151888660313/joe-kerrs-a-wip-of-a-fancover-of-draczes-fic) by joe-kerrs! Joe-kerrs was also kind enough to share some stunning WIPs for a [comic adaptation of chapter 11](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/152291924653/joe-kerrs-hey-dracze-heres-a-few-wips-of-my-hwa) which still makes me flail to the moon and back. You guys are incredible and I have no words.
> 
> Many thanks and love to everyone who helped with brainstorming, and all the comments and attention that make me the happiest and most spoiled ficcer alive *lies down on the ground and whimpers*

This, Bruce thinks as he stands in front of Joker’s door two days later, might just be the second hardest thing he has ever had to do.

His hand touches the security panel, just below the buttons, brushing over them but never actually pressing. It’s been doing that for nearly ten minutes now.

Ten valuable guard-less, camera-less minutes he’s already wasted, suspended in cold paralysis over the enormity of what he’s about to do. 

If he goes in there now. If he says what he’s prepared himself to say — painstakingly, writing down script after script after script, rehearsing them in his bedroom until the words etched themselves into his brain… 

Bruce breathes in, and out. He stares at the buttons without seeing them at all. And he wonders, not for the first time since the night of the fireworks, if he shouldn’t talk to his family first. Give them some sort of warning. But he discards the thought much like he did all the other times he had this argument with himself, because in the end, it all comes down to the fact that he doesn’t trust himself to go through with this entire thing if he actually sees, with his own eyes, the reactions he’s imagined ad nauseam in the pale cold 3am in the morning. He knows, thanks to the conversation in the cave, that Dick will stay in his corner, and he suspects — _hopes_ , with all his heart — that Alfred will too, but…

But there’s also Jason, who these days alternates between glaring and snapping at Bruce and ignoring him altogether, and who has refused to don the Robin costume two nights in a row. And then there’s — Barbara. Bruce has a pretty good idea of how that particular conversation is going to play out, and he’s not ready to have it just yet. With the two of them, he suspects, it’s going to come down to a choice. Us or him. Him or us. 

To face that choice, and the sacrifice that will inevitably follow, he needs to know where he stands first. He needs to have the plan, the… _promise_ of something to choose in the first place, solid and real and confirmed. And so…

He stares at the door, and wants to throw up his own rattling heart. 

_Just do this_ , he tells himself. _You’ve faced worse._

And he has. He knows he has. That still doesn’t change the fact that he’d much rather go up against Darkseid, alone and armed with nothing but his batarangs, than brave this door right now and face whatever future will take shape for him inside. 

He needs another four painful, thumping heartbeats before he can force himself to enter the security code. Another two to step inside. As he does the nausea only churns harder, and fear steals out of him in a sheen of sweat that clings uncomfortably to his back, and telling himself that it’s _okay, it’s fine, it’s only feelings, only… feelings_ , does jack shit to help. If Bruce had been any good with feelings they wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. And besides, even now, even having examined and rationalized his way through the situation until he’s exhausted all of its myriad angles, he still isn’t convinced he’s allowed to feel the things he does to begin with, let alone act on them. And he’s about to give Joker enough ammunition against him to last an entire lifetime, _willingly._ And. And, and, and. 

Nothing for it now, though — he’s inside. The door has closed behind him. And technically he could still leave, postpone the conversation or cancel it altogether, but Bruce knows he won’t. The stubborn thing inside him locks an loads, and whispers, _now or never._ And in the end, it’s enough to realize that he doesn’t want to contemplate the “never” anymore.

Bruce lifts his eyes and faces Joker, and when he does, suddenly he feels like he’s stepped right through the looking glass.

Joker is sitting at the table, a deck of cards spread in front of him in a game of solitaire. He doesn’t turn his head when he hears Bruce enter, and the way he’s sitting, his sharp profile sketched out in dark contours by the pink-orange sun setting beyond, drapes his face in shadow. 

And maybe this is why Bruce finds himself choosing the words that he does, through no conscious effort of his own:

“Hello. I came to talk.”

_I’ve been thinking lately. About you and me. About what’s gonna happen to us, in the end._

Joker doesn’t look up. He snaps a card face-up onto the table. 

Bruce watches him for a second or two before he moves. Coming up to him, choosing a seat across from him, only reinforces the looking glass effect. The scene isn’t exactly like the one Bruce remembers; for one thing, they’re in a spacious room rather than a dank cell, and instead of a prison jumpsuit Joker is wearing high-waisted purple suit pants and a glossy velvet shirt in a garish shade of yellow Arkham would never allow. The cell was dark, nearly pitch-black — Bruce’s preferred colors — and here the tall windows admit generous sunset that pools over them in a purple-pinkish checkerboard that’s all Joker. Then there’s the fact that the man across from Bruce now is definitely, without a doubt, the genuine article. But those differences only seem to emphasize the similarities, and absurdly, though he knows this couldn’t possibly be the case, Bruce wonders if Joker hasn’t set it up like this on purpose just to further upset Bruce’s already fragile balance.

God, that night in Arkham feels like a dream now, so distant, so impossibly removed from where they are now. And yet, Bruce experiences the same hollow chill in his bones now that he did back then. The same odd sense of destinies grinding, the tracks forking, shifting gears. That night, he wanted to talk to Joker about life and death. He thinks, distantly, that there’s some deep, dark irony in the fact that today, he’s here for a reason that’s completely different and yet just as life-changing. 

Just how close were they to a world in which this evening would have been impossible? Where would they be today, if Joker never changed his mind? Would one of them be dead by now, like Bruce predicted? Or would they still be rushing head-first into mutual destruction one fight at a time? 

The thought comes at him viciously and grabs him somewhere all too vulnerable, exposing anxieties he didn’t even know he harbored. Bruce tries to stave off its cold, cold talons by tracing the play of sunset over Joker’s face, wishing he could borrow some of the calm he sees there into his own heart. The sunset settles over Joker’s skin and hair and shirt in a warm, tender touch that makes Bruce want to touch him too. He breathes out and takes some comfort in the fact that he can see Joker like this the first place, and what it means for both of them. 

They’re here. They’ve come this far. _This_ is their reality now, not the bleak alternate present where he never touched Joker with anything other than violence. And there’s a future opening up for them that has hope in it, which is something Bruce could never have imagined back at Arkham that fateful night.

He breathes out and watches the man he’s fallen in love with, letting the feeling swell until it grows to the point where the anxiety has to ease out of the way.

A bit. There’s still the matter of actually talking about how he feels, but he thinks, he can wait. Let Joker have the next word. Bruce can give himself a moment or two to just… be. 

As if sensing Bruce’s internal struggle, Joker doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he takes his time picking a card from the deck and lays it out on the table — the king of hearts. He smiles, for reasons known only to him, and only then looks up at Bruce. 

And Bruce’s heart gives a sharp jolt like a foot that expects an extra stair where there is none, because even though Joker’s eyes are guarded, they’re not _cold_. They don’t carry the hateful, muted look of the last few weeks. Instead, they gaze up at Bruce in something like an invitation, offering a door not entirely ajar but open just enough for Bruce to put his foot in and force it the rest of the way. 

Bruce thinks he can work with that.

“Look at you, so dramatic,” Joker observes with more than a trace of fondness, sitting back. His eyes twinkle in the purple sunlight. “But I suppose the situation does call for it. I take it this is it? The moment where we finally… talk it out?”

Bruce nods, resting his hands on the table. He says, “Looks that way,” and is glad to hear his voice doesn’t crack. It’s a real danger, what with the way his heart is thumping. _The script_ , he reminds himself, _you’re ready for this._ Only God knows he’s not, and he’ll never be no matter how many conversations he rehearses with his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. 

But then the corner of Joker’s mouth twitches, and Bruce thinks, maybe _he_ isn’t either, and that… helps. Bruce knows how to be strong when someone else is weak. He sits up, watching closely, and by some miracle manages to hold his heart in.

“Geez.” Joker affects a full-body shudder, comically exaggerated, probably to distract from the way his smile turns just a touch smaller. “How about you do me a favor, darling, and knock me out, then wake me up when you’re done? Neither of us is exactly cut out for this sort of thing.”

Bruce wants to smirk. He’s sincerely tempted to ask Joker for the same thing.

“It’s you who said we need to talk,” he points out.

“I’m a mental patient,” Joker parries smoothly. “I can’t be held responsible for what I say.”

Bruce does smirk this time, and allows, “Nice try.”

“Yes, I’m very wily,” Joker agrees, then rests his elbows on the table and supports his chin in his hands. “But fine, I suppose. Let’s make like a pair of preteen tykes at a slumber party. But what about…?” He points with his head to the nearest camera. “You sure you want to bare your little bat-heart to me with everyone watching?”

Ah, right. “No one’s watching,” Bruce tells him. “I’ve dismissed the guards and disconnected the cameras. Whatever happens here won’t be recorded.” He takes a deep breath, not letting himself look away from Joker. “I hope you appreciate what that means.”

“Oooooh, a show of trust! Now that’s what I call a strong opening statement!” Joker’s smile grows sly when he points to the bracelet on his wrist. “But you still have a way of activating this here beauty, I take it?”

“Of course,” Bruce agrees. “I’m not stupid.”

“Good.” Joker kicks his leg under the table, fondly. “I’d hate to discover I’ve wasted my heart on an idiot.”

Bruce’s breath catches, and just like that, he can’t quite get enough air. Oh God. Oh God. This… is it, and now that he’s staring the moment right in the face, now that Joker has all but grabbed his cape and plunged them both right into deep water, he’s all too keenly aware just how unprepared he is for any of it. 

But it’s his turn. Joker’s laid his cards wide open, and damn, if Bruce isn’t jealous of the ease with which he can do that, just… drop that kind of bombshell between them as a matter of fact, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Bruce can’t do that. He never could. Maybe once upon a different lifetime, when he wasn’t everything he is today, he could look into the eyes of his mother and father and talk about love, but the person he is now is beginning to clam up just thinking the word. He simply can’t work past it. 

But he has to find a way — it’s only fair. Even if it does mean baring himself wide open for the man who not so long ago did everything he could to kill him, and damn, maybe he is an idiot after all. He supposes only an idiot would find himself in such a fucked-up situation in the first place.

Still, if he is fucked-up, then so is Joker. Which is perhaps why they never could let one another go, and why they’re sitting here now. But before Bruce accepts that completely, he has to know. 

“Do you mean it?” he makes himself ask, though what he really wants to do is sit there in silence and soak up Joker’s words with everything they imply. “No tricks,” he whispers. “Please. Just, tell me. Tell me if that’s really how you feel.”

Joker’s eyes search his. As they do, his smile changes into something almost as soft as the light outside, and his gaze clears, and he lets his hands drop to the table over the cards, the tips gently nudging Bruce’s.

“I thought you were supposed to be a detective,” he says in a low, gentle voice that makes Bruce think of white arms cradling his head and soft pillows and warm silence and the haze of early dawn. “I don’t think I could’ve made it any more obvious that I’ve been in love with you since the night we met.”

Bruce’s heart still can’t find its footing, and seems to rattle without rhyme or reason in his ribcage, wanting to grow way past what Bruce’s chest can hold. It radiates warmth into the rest of his body, into his blood, into his bones. He doesn’t think he can keep it all in. It’s too big. There’s no room for his voice anymore, no words for him to say.

But he _can_ respond by actions. He brings his hands up to the cowl. He clicks it open, then slowly lifts it over his head. He puts it in his lap and faces Joker with nothing in the way, with no white lenses to shield his own eyes, nothing to hide behind, no protection. He makes himself vulnerable on purpose. He lets Joker see the full extent of what his words have done to him.

The air in the room feels cold against his heated face, but in a good way. It helps. He tries to focus on it instead of the stifling grip of self-consciousness, or the love surging to overwhelm him, opening him up, making him soft and weak. 

Joker stares at him. The sight of Bruce’s de-cowled face seems to have thrown him for a loop. For a good long while, neither of them can find their voices. 

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Joker whispers, blinking, still staring. “This is so strange.”

“You knew who I was,” Bruce points out, sounding hoarse to his own ears.

“Yes, but…” Joker runs a hand through his hair, his lips stretching into an incredulous smile that, of all things, looks fragile, like it’s about to shatter. “I mean. It’s one thing to know and another to… I mean, when I dealt with one of you at a time, it was…” he sighs, then rubs his eyes. “Excuse me. I don’t think I was ready for this. I need a moment.”

“That’s fine,” Bruce manages. He thinks he needs one, too. Or make it several.

Joker’s fingers drum against the table. He grabs a card at random and starts to fiddle with it, bending a corner this way and that. They sit there staring at one another, painfully open, painfully exposed with no masks in the way, and in the meantime, the sky outside steadily bleeds from pink to darker purple.

Then Joker says, “Well. Whose turn is it now? I’m getting rather lost.”

He looks it, too, under the skittish smile and the uncertain twitch in his fingers. Bruce imagines he must look much the same. On impulse, he reaches out and covers one of Joker’s hands with his own, and as he does, both of them let out a breath. Their eyes hold. They can’t feel each other’s pulses through the thick glove but Bruce’s own heart is at last beginning to slow down, and he imagines that Joker’s might be doing the same.

The touch, and the feeling of Joker’s hand stilling under his, helps him remember the words he’s prepared. He thinks now might be the right time to get back to them. He knows better than to hope that Joker can be counted on to stay within any sort of script, but he can at least get them started, and now that Joker’s confession seems to have finally settled into something Bruce can begin to parse and accept as the truth, he thinks he’s as ready as he’ll ever be. 

So, after a deep fortifying breath, Bruce says, “I have a new deal for you.”

“Do you indeed,” Joker whispers.

“Yes.” Bruce studies his face for another moment, allowing his hand to press a little closer. He clears his throat. “An arrangement. If you want. It’ll be your decision. But if your therapy is successful, if they ever declare you free to go, I would… I would invite you to move in. Not _here_ ,” he sweeps his gaze over Joker’s parlor, “but properly. With me.”

Joker’s eyes widen. He says, “Oh.” 

For a long time, he doesn’t say anything at all.

By the time Joker finally moves Bruce is all but ready to throw up all over the fluffy carpet, or alternatively, leave with his tail tucked between his legs and never come back; and even then Joker doesn’t give Bruce a proper response. Instead, he slides his hand from under Bruce’s, gets up, strides over to the door and flicks the light switch. The soft, late-evening half-gloom is instantly banished; Bruce blinks in the stark yellow light that chases it out. Joker moves back to his chair. He studies Bruce, fingers of one hand once again tapping on the table, chin cradled in the other, nails scratching over skin.

“Does that mean what I think it means?” he asks finally. 

“It means…” Bruce swallows and makes himself soldier on. He has a script. He’s prepared for this. He’s thought this through six ways to Sunday and he’s made his choice. He just needs to let the words out. “It means that I want to give us a chance,” he finishes.

Joker’s eyes narrow. “I’m afraid you’re gonna have to be clearer than that, Batsy. Do you want a relationship with me? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Bruce closes his eyes as he breathes out, and then in. He looks back to Joker.

“Yes.” 

Joker sits back, drawing in on himself, hugging his own arms. His face twitches. His fingers, his entire body, draws taut and tense, and the ticks only get worse. The silence charges as the moment builds and builds and builds, and Bruce has timed his visit so that Joker would still be under the effect of his meds but he thinks he knows what’s coming and sure enough, seconds later, Joker can’t contain his own feelings anymore and the first shards of laughter — quiet, almost repressed — spill out. Bruce tries not to take it personally when they do; he’s seen enough by now to know that Joker reacts with laughter to pretty much any emotionally charged situation, and if this doesn’t count as one, he doesn’t know what does. He’s not laughing _at_ Bruce… Probably. Or if he is, Bruce has a feeling that he’s laughing at himself, too, and at this entire ridiculous situation.

Bruce sympathizes. He rather wants to laugh at them both, too. He wonders what it must feel like, for Joker, after all these years, and then shuts that train of thought down as soon as it coalesces because he knows it would only end with his brain going into guilt trip overdrive. He doesn’t need it now and neither does Joker. All Bruce can do is try to make things right in the here and now.

Still, what Joker says next makes not looking back in regret all the more difficult. 

“You have no idea,” he chokes, “no idea… how long I’ve waited… How I wondered…”

And just like that, everything in Bruce goes soft soft _soft_. He watches as Joker’s eyes begin to glimmer just as his voice thins, straining like it’s forced to hold way beyond what it’s able to carry. He’s shaking his head and digging fingernails into his arms through the velvet shirt like he needs the grounding pain of it to keep believing this is real. 

It’s real, Bruce wants to reassure him over the soft, almost sweet ache in his gut. He wants to come over to him and stroke his hair and kiss his face, over and over, however long it might take to help Joker believe it. 

Once again he is reminded how close they were to never having this conversation at all. He can’t imagine living that way right now. It gives him the strength to keep himself still as he promises, 

“We can try. If you still want it by the time you get out.”

Joker is beginning to settle down. At least, he gets lucid enough to point out, “That could be a while.” He looks up at Bruce with eyes that shimmer much too brightly. “You sure you won’t change your mind along the way?”

“Pretty sure,” Bruce whispers, and means it. Now that he’s made his peace with how he feels for this man, he doubts he’ll ever be able to make himself stop. The urge to close his arms around him still hasn’t gone away, and neither has the softness — in fact, they only seem to be getting worse. 

And maybe Joker can read it in his face. At any rate he sees something there that pleases him because his entire face flushes, and when he looks away it’s almost demurely, his mouth twitching like he can’t quite hold in whatever good feelings are swirling in his heart. He takes his time, looking like that, being _happy_ , and Bruce takes the chance to soak up the sight with everything he is, letting it steady him, warm him in turn. He thinks he’ll never forget the way Joker looks in this one moment, and what it feels like to be seeing it, until he dies. 

And then, as is his wont, Joker ruins it. “It’s like…” he sighs, giggles to himself a touch hysterically. “It’s like the flashlight joke all over again! Do you get it, Bats? Only this time you’re dangling a carrot, too!”

“That’s not —” Bruce starts, but then promptly gives up. There’s no use. Not when Joker is off laughing his feelings out again, and Bruce sits back and lets him, and watches him writhe on the chair, hugging himself, lifting his legs, rolling this way and that. _My new normal_ , he thinks. He’ll need to get used to reactions like this, and to reading them for more nuance so he can tell all of Joker’s different laughs apart. He zeroes in on the tears squeezed out of Joker’s squinted eyes, on the tight grip he has on himself, and thinks, maybe he’s already halfway there. He certainly understands this man well enough by now to recognize the signs of agitation in the pitch of his voice and the lines of his face. Agitation, anxiety… hesitation, still. Even now. 

Bruce doesn’t think he blames Joker for not letting himself quite take this development at face value. He doesn’t know if he could, were their positions reversed. 

Still, distantly, he wonders if he wouldn’t feel better if _he_ could just laugh all of his feelings out, too. 

He doesn’t feel like laughing so much as throwing up, though. Maybe it amounts to the same thing. 

Even more than that, now even more than before, he wants to clear the distance between them and hug Joker close until the laughter soaks into his chest; until his own bones rattle with it. 

He doesn’t. There’s still a lot they need to talk about and he doesn’t trust himself to stick to his agenda. If he starts touching this man now, he might not be able to stop.

So he makes himself wait until Joker quiets down again before pointing out, “If you agree, we’ll need to set up new rules.”

Joker wipes the tears on the sleeve of his shirt. He flashes Bruce a toothy smirk that looks huge and painfully bright while still wobbling a little at the corners. “Of course, dear. I’d expect nothing less from you.”

His voice sounds so much better now; stronger, steadier. It’s like a good deal of his anxiety has left him along with the laughter, and when he straightens in his chair now it is with the assurance of a man who’s beginning to finally believe his luck. 

This is… good. It’s good. Bruce likes seeing him this way. He clears his throat; the softness has spread so far now that it’s threatening to spill all over his eyes.

“I’ll get you a calendar,” he promises, struggling to keep his own voice steady. That’s the least he can do; God only knows what his face is doing right now. “You’ll get more trips outside provided you don’t act out like you did with Carter. And in time, maybe we can figure out a better way for you to leave here than in the chair.”

“You mean I’ll actually have to _walk_?” Joker pulls a disgusted face, extra theatrical now with a fresh spark in him that hasn’t been there in months. “On all that grass? Think of my shoes!”

Laughter lurks in his words, just under the surface. It twinkles at Bruce playfully from Joker’s eyes. Bruce can’t help it; he lets it contaminate his own self-control and responds with a smile of his own. 

“I’ll get you new ones,” he promises, and wonders just how goofy they both look right now.

It’s a warm thought. Light. _Soft_. Bruce wonders if he could ever get used to it.

Joker opens his mouth as though to say something, but then he looks at Bruce, and something about what he sees catches him short. Whatever theatrical expression he was gearing himself into melts away into a gentle, almost serene smile that does very inconvenient things to Bruce’s heart and lower gut alike.

“You know,” Joker whispers, eyes gleaming, pale cheeks tinted pink, “you actually look very beautiful like this.”

Bruce stares. He has no idea what to say to that, especially with all the warmth that is now choking him up.

So he decides to plow right on through the awkwardness and clears his throat, and resolutely gets back to his agenda. It’s better this way, for both of them.

“I’ll keep visiting you as always. But apart from just talking and card games, I suggest we spar for an hour every month. It’ll help you release some of the tension and keep you in shape.”

Joker’s eyes twinkle. He looks like he’s trying to hold back laughter again, and like he can see right through what Bruce doesn’t say, mainly: _I need this just as much as you do._

“So you did miss it,” he brags.

Bruce intercepts his smirk and shoots it right back. “No more messing around with your meds,” he challenges. “You need to take all of them. Where were you even stashing them?”

“I have my ways.” Joker tilts his head coyly, letting green tresses fall over his eyes. 

“I’m serious, Joker. You need to take all your meds. And you need to give me all the pills you’ve been hiding away. They’re in the bedroom, aren’t they? How did you manage to stash them without the cameras catching you?”

In response, Joker only looks smug, sitting up straight and winking at Bruce, extremely pleased with himself. Bruce supposes he can let him have this one; as far as misbehaving goes, when it comes to Joker, not taking your pills when you’re supposed to and hiding them away is practically innocent. 

Or it would be, if Joker’s meds weren’t so central to his therapy. 

They’ll deal with it later. If Bruce is to have a hope of ever getting through this conversation he needs to take it one hurdle at a time, so he struggles to remember the script and gets to the next item.

“At some point, maybe even soon, you’ll have your visitation rights reinstated,” he recites. “You’ll be able to see your lawyer. All visits will be supervised and we’ll have to clear them with your doctor and the GCPD, but if you keep showing signs of progress, it can all be arranged.”

“Oh goody,” Joker claps, then leans forward, chin in hands once again. “Will I get to make phone calls too? And cable TV? I’ve missed so many episodes of _House Hunters_.”

“If you keep behaving, we can negotiate,” Bruce promises. 

Joker appears to mull this over. “Define behaving.” 

“You’ll stick with your therapy,” Bruce tells him. “You’ll commit. You’ll treat it seriously. You won’t try to sabotage yourself, and you won’t try to… test me like you did with the pill. I’m committed to this, Joker. I won’t quit on you. But I need to know you’re really serious about this, so that if you ever tell me you want to stop and get back to Arkham, I’ll know you mean it.”

Joker looks into his eyes, letting seconds tick by. With every one that passes his smile fades into something almost too earnest for Bruce to handle: a naked intensity, demanding nothing but the truth.

“And if I do play nice, as a reward, I’ll get you?” Joker asks quietly. 

Bruce swallows. That’s a very crude way to put it, but… “Yes,” he agrees. “If you make it through, we’ll give it a chance. I… I want to.” 

They look at one another.

“You know, I almost escaped,” Joker confesses. “I was this close.”

Bruce’s throat closes up. He knows it had been bad recently but apparently he’d underestimated just _how_ bad…

“Why didn’t you?” he manages.

Joker never once breaks eye-contact, but he does let his mouth stretch up, just an inch. “Easy,” he whispers. “You decided you want me back.”

He stands up. Trailing long fingers over the length of the table, he starts to make his way around it, over to Bruce. Bruce’s mouth goes dry as he watches.

“Yeah?” he tries, hoarsely.

“Yeah.” Joker smiles fully as he stands over Bruce and gently strokes his knuckle along Bruce’s hairline. His finger is cold; Bruce imagines warming it up in his mouth.

Joker gets closer, and makes his intentions clear as he gazes down at Bruce’s lap and then back to his face. _Yes, come here_ , Bruce thinks, putting the cowl on the table and making space for him even as the rational part of his brain instantly unrolls an entire parchment of reasons why that is a very bad idea. Just now he can’t bring himself to care. Not when Joker is so close, not when his finger is still trailing little patterns along Bruce’s temple. 

Just this once. Tonight, he can let himself let go. There’s one more rule he has to impose but it — it can wait, yes _God_ it can wait. Bruce wants this too much, and this conversation has wrung him dry already, and they both deserve a reward for getting this far. And so when Joker perches on his lap, somehow managing to look both sharp-edged and yet painfully soft, Bruce’s arm comes up around his waist and urges him even closer, objections be damned. Joker’s hipbone juts under his hand through layers of high-waisted pants and Bruce’s own glove, and Bruce lets his fingers curl, stroking a circle around it. His other hand finds Joker’s thigh and presses in, smoothing down its length from knee to hip. When he breathes in, the air rushes with citrus and chemicals and the herbal tea he can smell on Joker’s hot breath, and he’s lost. His mind is a haze of love and want and heat which crowds both his head and much much lower, and once his eyes snag on Joker’s blood-red mouth, he can’t pry them away. 

“Am I wrong?” Joker whispers. His finger reaches the corner of Bruce’s mouth and teases a feather-light touch to his bottom lip. He leans in. “Am I wrong, darling?”

“No,” Bruce breathes, and that’s all he can manage before he closes his eyes and kisses him.

A part of him — one that is still coherent enough to form thought, let alone anticipation — expected heat, and passion, and force. It did not expect to find the body in his arms stilling almost to the point of paralysis. Even Joker’s breath seems to have stopped dead, and in response Bruce stills, too, suddenly cold with worry. He’s afraid to open his eyes and see the damage he’s done, even though inside he’s thinking, _No, that can’t be_ , there’s no way he could have possibly misread Joker’s invitation. No way he could have miscalculated this badly. But Joker’s lips stay frozen under Bruce’s, and Bruce doesn’t dare move to push or pull away now, waiting, his heart hammering —

Joker breathes out into his mouth. The sound is jagged, trembling on its way out, tickling Bruce’s skin. And then, just as he was marble stillness a blink ago suddenly he’s all movement, shifting in Bruce’s lap, his hands shooting up to trap both sides of Bruce’s face, under his jaw, at the junction where naked flesh meets armor collar. There his long fingers hook like talons, catching on Bruce’s skin with the sharp points of his fingernails, dragging just on the right edge of pain. Bruce opens his eyes to find two acidic green ones spearing into him with an intensity that steals his breath, and all coherent thought with it. 

Then Joker’s fingernails dig in even _harder_ , urging Bruce back in, and this time when their lips touch Joker’s mouth is open for him, and this, _this_ is what Bruce expected when he let himself imagine this moment in stolen, guilt-ridden moments of weakness. The intensity from Joker’s eyes, from his fingers, from his entire tight-coiled body, bleeds from his mouth into Bruce’s, pressing their mouths as close as they can get without melting their skin together. Their mouths move against one another with the kind of urgency that goes slow but deep, looking for the right fit, Joker’s pointed nose nuzzling Bruce’s cheek, Bruce’s chin rubbing his, Joker’s fingers dragging over Bruce’s face, Bruce’s hands curling and pressing into Joker’s slim body, two men who have denied themselves for years and are finally beginning to figure out a new kind of physicality that’s familiar and yet not at all. Bruce is drunk with it instantly, with the kiss itself and with how much more of Joker there is for him to know and explore; and when Joker lets out a desperate little sound caught halfway between a sigh and a moan it shoots down Bruce’s throat and straight to his stirring groin, and he can’t help but respond with a groan he imagines sounds much the same. 

He can’t believe this is actually happening. That this is real, and that he is _letting it be real._ The thought is laced with guilt and self-loathing and _You’re kissing a fucking_ murderer, but even that familiar emotional blade isn’t quite sharp enough to poke holes in the heady, citrus-scented haze Joker’s lips bring, and the spike of it, when it mixes with Bruce’s arousal, only makes him tighten his hold on Joker and press their mouths deeper, as if in defiance, as if owning his decision and everything it means, claiming this moment for what it is rather than what it is supposed to be. He wants to savor it. Especially since he knows he won’t get a chance to do it again for a very long time. 

_That_ thought is finally enough to let him regain his senses enough to pull away, but not before leaning in for another short kiss to Joker’s mouth, and another, and one more. His mouth tingles all over, and his face is flushed to the point where he’s sure he looks ridiculous, but when he looks up it is to the sight of Joker looking at him through half-lidded eyes that gleam bright and hot and so heartbreakingly _fond_ , and he’s smiling, his lipstick smudged all over his mouth and chin.

Bruce feels that smile all the way down in his heart. He didn’t think it was possible for him to feel any warmer but there he is, and for a moment he’s so dazed he forgets what he was going to say. 

“You’re a mess,” Joker observes quietly, warmly, letting his thumb circle Bruce’s lower lip and just below. His breath is rushed but his voice stays steady, and Bruce almost shudders imagining what it would sound like in his bed. “I got lipstick all over your face.” Joker leans close again, brushing his lips to Bruce’s ear, purring into it. “I like it.”

He kisses Bruce’s ear and closes the lobe between his teeth, lightly, to tug at it like a pup playing with another dog. The sensation it brings scrambles Bruce’s mind into a shock of electric currents he’s altogether unprepared for, and maybe it’s the panic at something so unexpected so soon that finally sobers him up, but he manages to rally against the rush of lust and, gently, puts one hand on Joker’s heaving chest to push him to a safe distance. 

“There’s one more thing,” he rasps, proud of himself for mustering even this much restraint.

Joker tips his head to the side. Underneath his very obvious arousal he looks amused now, and lets his arm slide around Bruce’s neck in a gesture so painfully easy and familiar it almost kicks Bruce’s resolve to the wind all over again.

“And what is that?” Joker asks. 

“One more rule,” Bruce manages.

“Do tell.”

Bruce takes a deep breath. God, they shouldn’t have kissed. Not so soon. Now that he got a taste he finds what he’s about to suggest all but impossible, and the reasons for that decision no longer seem so reasonable.

But somehow, miraculously, he manages to relocate his sense of duty, and rallies. _It’s for the best_ , he reminds himself. _You know this. So stop thinking with your dick._

He opens his mouth and recites, with altogether too much difficulty, “Starting tomorrow, I won’t… touch or kiss you like this, or at all, until this —” he touches the cold gleaming metal of the shock bracelet on Joker’s wrist — “comes off.”

Joker stares at him, eyes going wide, as though Bruce has just switched to Aramaic. He whispers, “What?”

“I won’t touch you until you’re officially cleared to leave,” Bruce rephrases, already hating himself for it.

Joker’s eyes narrow dangerously, and Bruce half expects him to bite him again, and not at all playfully this time. He thinks he’d almost prefer it to what Joker actually does, which is slide off Bruce’s lap and get to his feet, and instantly put way too much distance between them like he’s been burned. 

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” Bruce assures him, trying to keep his face still and mustering whatever authority he still can, which isn’t much. 

“No!” Joker grabs his own hair, pulling at it hard. “That’s — that’s not fair!”

“I know.” Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to keep his breath under control. The room seems much too cold now without Joker’s warm body and breath so close. “It’s got to be this way,” he struggles anyway, knowing that it’s the right thing to do no matter how much his own body might disagree. He’s thought this through. He’s determined… or tries to be. It’s so difficult to stand by this decision now with the tingle of Joker’s mouth still hot on his own. 

“Why?” Joker demands, furiously, anger mixing in with whatever arousal still lingers in him, shrinking his pupils, painting his eyes almost supernaturally bright. “Why on _Earth_ would you say that? Bats, this is ridiculous! You’re fine with us beating the crap out of each other but you draw the line at cuddling?!”

“You’re trying to make it sound more ridiculous than it is,” Bruce accuses. “You know there’s a big difference.”

“You’re the one who _started_ the cuddling!”

“I know. But it needs to stop. After tonight, it will. I will only touch you if you really, really need it, in case of panic attacks and other extreme circumstances, and only when you actually ask for it. But that’s it.”

“ _Why_?!”

“You need an incentive to keep working on getting better,” Bruce whispers. “I’m giving you one. This way you’ll have something to look forward to.” He takes a deep breath. “We both will.”

Joker opens his mouth, and then shuts it. He considers Bruce, putting his hands on his hips, narrowing his eyes. More than anything else right now he looks curious, of all things, like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.

“You would seriously do that,” he says, slowly. “You would actually withhold physical contact to manipulate me into therapy?”

Bruce winces. He doesn’t care for the wording one bit. He opens his mouth to say as much, to explain himself better, but Joker forestalls it with an incredulous chuckle that sounds almost like a bark. 

“Why Batsy,” he says, “If I weren’t so mad I’d be proud of you. You devious bastard!”

“It’ll be better this way,” Bruce insists. “The rules will be clearer. No more misunderstandings. And you’ll still have the hug machi —”

“Don’t you dare mention that thing,” Joker snaps, all traces of previous amusement gone as he turns away from Bruce, bringing his arms around himself. 

Bruce swallows. He doesn’t want to argue about the hug machine now, so he lets it drop, and waits. 

“Joker,” he implores after a moment. “You _know_ that it’s the right thing.” 

“Can we have our first sparring session right now?” Joker asks tightly after a charged few seconds. “Suddenly I have this tremendous urge to punch you in the face.”

Bruce slumps in his chair, rubbing his face. He sighs. “Joker.” 

“You know what? I’ve got a rule, too,” Joker hisses. “In fact, I’ve got two! One — you’ll drop the playboy act. If I gotta go blueballed then so do you. I don’t care how you explain it, say that you switched to yoga or that you found God or that you donated your dick to charity, I don’t care, as long as when I get out I don’t have to wade through a parade of tabloids describing how you seduced this and that supermodel while I rotted here doing crossword puzzles.”

“All right,” Bruce whispers. This actually won’t be too difficult, he thinks; he hasn’t worked on the playboy act in months. It’ll be relief to have an excuse to drop it altogether, and besides, he doesn’t think he could make himself fake it convincingly now, anyway, even if he wanted to. “And the other rule?”

“If I have to suffer this inane _therapy_ , then so do you. I’m not the only one here with issues, honey.”

Bruce fights down a spike of apprehension. “What do you mean?”

“You get yourself a therapist. See how you like it. Then later we can compare notes.”

 _This is ridiculous_ , Bruce wants to say; the words come this close to tumbling out. But the sharp warning in Joker’s voice stops him cold, and he realizes, this is no joke. He has to be careful.

So he takes his time weighing options, and finally, grudgingly, allows, “Fine. If that’ll make you happy.”

“Thanks ever so,” Joker murmurs, and refuses to turn to face Bruce.

 _Get ready_ , Bruce thinks bitterly as he stifles another sigh, _you’re setting yourself up for a lot more moments like this one. That, too, is gonna be the new normal._

A part of him dreads the prospect. Another part of him dreads this entire thing, and wants to beat himself over the head with a rolled-up newspaper until he starts paying attention, pointing out, _This is a murderer, a murderer, and you’re talking about having a relationship with him._ Mostly, though, he misses the weight of Joker’s body on his lap, his bony form under his hands, his lips on Bruce’s. 

“Joker,” he calls, quietly. He hesitates, and then risks, “J. Come here. Please.”

Joker twitches. His body tenses as he glances over his shoulder at Bruce. 

“Do you even have any idea what you’re getting yourself into,” he whispers. “Do you? You know who I am. You know what I am. I told you: you’re gonna have to take all of me. They can drug me all they want but they can’t change me.”

Bruce swallows. “I know,” he promises. “I know that.”

“I’m a murderer.”

“I… know.”

“And you still want me?”

Bruce considers him, then says, in a low voice, “I think I just made that pretty clear.”

When Joker doesn’t respond, Bruce selects his next words carefully. He’s thought a lot about this, and he thinks he finally does have an answer. “I want you,” he says. “I want the man who willingly agreed to participate in therapy when I asked him to. I want the man who’s trying to change things.”

Joker looks away again. His grip on himself gets tighter. “So you don’t want _me_ , you want the washed-out loser. Figures.”

“No,” Bruce denies, hotly. “No. I want you. Look, this whole thing… It’s hard. I haven’t figured it all out yet. I’m — confused. But I want you, and I want to give us a chance, and if you want it too, if you’re with me, then you won’t be out there killing people, and that… I guess I can work with that.”

“So now being my boyfriend is a noble sacrifice? You’ll date me to save Gotham? Damn it, Bruce, do you even hear yourself?”

 _Bruce._ He swallows around the word and it goes down thick and lumpy, dropping into the pit of his stomach.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Sure you didn’t.”

“J —”

“I’ll make your life difficult,” Joker challenges, his voice cold. “I’ll be a pain in the ass. You’ll be fed up with me five days out of seven. I’m not an easy person to live with, Bruce, and I won’t be _nice_ just to appeal to your sense of _propriety_.”

“I — realize that,” Bruce whispers. 

“You think you’re ready for that?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce says, honestly. “But I want to find out.” 

Joker turns. His eyes search Bruce’s.

“It might be a really long time,” he says.

Bruce tries to meet his gaze without turning away. He replies, “That is entirely up to you.”

“I need to be sure,” Joker whispers. “I’ll stay, and I’ll stomach all of your stupid _rules_ and your doctors and your pills for as long as it takes, and I’ll keep playing along if you want me to, but I need to know that you won’t just discard me. That what waits on the other side will be worth it.”

“What can I do?” Bruce asks over a tight, tight throat.

“Tell me,” Joker pleads. “Tell me what you feel for me. I want your word.”

Oh God. This is exactly what Bruce had been dreading. Because he can’t articulate it in words; it wasn’t until the fireworks that he could even verbalize it in his own thoughts. He can’t say it. He just physically can’t, and he feels himself clamming up, and each second that passes makes it harder to even open his mouth until it’s all but impossible. 

And maybe Joker realizes this. His gaze never loses its intensity but some sort of softer, gentler understanding creeps in as well, and after several moments of silence he turns to face Bruce fully, taking a step closer.

“Do you care for me?” he asks. “You can nod or shake your head.”

Swallowing, feeling grateful, Bruce nods. Joker takes another step towards him. 

“Do you need me?”

Bruce nods again.

“Do you want me?” Another two steps. 

“Yes,” Bruce forces out. 

God, yes. So much. 

Joker is standing over him now, just like he did before, except he isn’t touching Bruce this time. Yet. He still looks cautious as he lets his arms drop to his sides, and stays just an inch out of Bruce’s reach. 

“You called me J.,” he whispers.

“Yeah.” Bruce lifts his head to meet his eye, heart pounding. 

“I think,” Joker starts, then takes a deep breath. His eyes go softer still. “I think I like that,” he whispers, and Bruce’s insides warm all over again.

He puts his hands on his knees, tapping them once. “Come here,” he says. “Please.”

Instead of complying Joker glances at the cameras. He asks, “This idiotic rule of yours. When does it go into effect?”

“Tonight,” Bruce says, “after I leave here.”

“Mhm.” Joker turns back to him. “And how much time do we have until the cameras go back on?”

Bruce consults the electronic display in his gauntlet. “Thirty minutes.”

“Thirty minutes,” Joker echoes, pensively. “Well then.” Finally, his mouth lifts into a thin, careful smile. “I suppose we’d better make the most of it while we can.”

He sits down on Bruce’s lap again and lets himself be cradled close. He leans in, and Bruce kisses him with all the need and hunger he knows he’ll have to keep under lock and key from now on…

… But not quite yet. For now, they can still enjoy what stolen moments they can, and Bruce intends to use them to show Joker exactly what will award him on the other side of all this. 

And as he kisses him, he wonders, distantly, why Joker never asked if Bruce loved him. But maybe he understands. He wants to believe he’d say yes but he isn’t sure he could, and that hesitation is probably the very thing Joker didn’t want to risk. 

So he kisses Joker all the more to show rather than tell him the truth, and prays that it’s enough to finally convince this man that he really, absolutely means it. He tries to tell him with his mouth…

… And thinks, suddenly, that maybe he wants to tell him with his hands, too. 

He stops the kiss and gently pulls away. Joker looks frustrated and opens his mouth to say something, possibly complain, but he shuts up when he notices what Bruce is doing, and watches wordlessly as Bruce unfastens the gauntlets and starts to tug them off. 

Bruce leaves the gloves on the table next to the cowl. He turns to Joker, and shudders at the look of deep, dark desire he finds in his wide-blown pupils. 

He touches the top button of Joker’s shirt.

“May I —?”

Joker’s breath catches, and he nods jerkily. “Knock yourself out, baby,” he purrs a second later, as though trying to cover up his earlier surprise, and Bruce smiles. God, he’s in love.

He undoes the first button. Then the second, then the third, working his way down until the shirt falls open, still clinging to Joker’s shoulders, still tucked into the high waistband of the pants, but inviting Bruce’s hands to come on in and explore. He looks up to Joker once again for permission and finds it in the way Joker licks his mouth, watching him with dark, dark eyes. 

_Shit._ This was a mistake. 

Even so, Bruce’s hands slide into the shirt before he can even articulate why they shouldn’t, and touch along Joker’s sides. Lightly at first, delighting in the small shudder that runs through Joker’s body at the contact, and then pressing closer, more firmly. Bruce trails his hands down to Joker’s sharp hipbones and then back up, over the hollow of a skinny, unnervingly tiny waist, over the rise of ribs, up to the armpits. His fingers snag on scars, so many of them, tender raised skin, pink and criss-crossing over snow-white skin in spiderwebs of ridges Bruce traces with careful, careful hands. He touches down Joker’s sides again, lingering over his waist, before moving his hands over the flat stomach, also lined with scars. It shudders under his touch, skipping as Joker sucks in a quiet breath. Slowly, his eyes enthralled just as his hands are, Bruce outlines the thin, defined muscles up until he reaches Joker’s chest and maps it out, too. Feeling brave, he circles the pale nipples, which stand up perky and alert as if inviting Bruce to kiss them. 

He doesn’t let himself go quite this far just yet — doesn’t dare. He isn’t sure either of them could stand it without spontaneously combusting. But God, he wants to, so much, especially with how hard Joker is gripping his shoulders, and how hard and fast his breath is coming, and it’s heady, it’s _fascinating_ , to see just how sensitive this man is to Bruce’s touch, how easily he lets himself come undone for him. How little they know one another in this way, and how much there is still for them to learn.

Bruce looks into Joker’s eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Joker’s hands come up to cup his face. “If you don’t kiss me right now,” he whispers, “I’m gonna chew out your eyeballs and eat them.”

It almost ruins the mood when Bruce’s mind unhelpfully tries to visualize the threat, but thankfully Joker doesn’t give him the time, leaning in to claim Bruce’s mouth and shifting so that his exposed chest rubs against the batsuit. He moans into Bruce’s mouth, hot and urgent, and Bruce sneaks his hands around him to press them into his back, feeling the jut of bones moving under his fingers, the shift in Joker’s breath.

They stay locked like that, desperate to be close, mouths kissing, Bruce’s hands moving over Joker’s upper body for all they’re worth, Joker’s chest catching on the hard armor plates of Bruce’s suit, his hands carding through Bruce’s hair and running over the suit and then back to his face like he can’t decide which one he likes touching better. Bruce can feel the shock bracelet snagging against his skin, a shock of chill contrasting with their heated bodies, and holds on all the more tightly, all the more firmly. At some point the shirt slips from Joker’s shoulders entirely and hangs down over the ground, forgotten, still tucked into the waist of Joker’s pants. The air thickens with their quiet sighs and half-swallowed moans. Tongues find their way to each other, touching, meeting, teasing. It’s hot and urgent but somehow languid all at once, and Bruce’s head swims with it, and he never, ever wants it to end.

By the time he has to, his cock strains painfully in his codpiece and there’s an urgent tent in Joker’s pants, tipped with a tiny stain of moisture where precum has soaked through. Bruce tries not to look for fear he’ll never let go if he lets himself linger on it, but even as he tries to get up Joker refuses to stop kissing him. 

“Will you be watching?” he asks, a whisper of hot air into Bruce’s mouth. 

“Yes,” Bruce promises, without hesitation. 

“Good.” Joker kisses his cheek, his temple, his closed eyes. “I want you to touch yourself when you do.”

“ _Yes_.”

“And I expect one hell of an orgasm when I finally get out of here.”

“You’ll get it,” Bruce whispers, “I promise.” 

“Don’t you forget it.” Finally, Joker steps away, and Bruce opens his eyes to see him sigh and shiver in the cold air, half-naked and hard and disheveled by Bruce’s own hand. 

“You’re beautiful,” Bruce tells him before he can stop himself.

Joker looks at him and smiles, looking sad now underneath the lust. 

“I bet you say that to all the clowns,” he murmurs, starting to pull the shirt back over his shoulders. “Go now before I hump you.” He turns to pick up one of Bruce’s gloves from the table. “Put your hand up.”

Bruce does, and watches with a closed-up throat as Joker fits it carefully over his hand.

“Now the other.”

The other glove finds its way back on Bruce’s hand too, and instantly Bruce wants to tug it back off, just to keep the heat and texture of Joker’s skin on his own a little longer. He watches as Joker picks up the cowl and looks up at Bruce questioningly.

“Should I —”

“No.” Flushed as he is, putting on the cowl now would be torture. Bruce takes it from Joker’s hands and holds it in one hand, and tries to ignore the feeling of _wrong wrong WRONG_ at the thought of leaving now.

“I’ll be back,” he promises over the sandpaper in his throat. 

“I know.” Joker finds a smile for him, tight and small. “Go.”

Bruce steps in for one more lingering kiss. “Thank you,” he whispers. 

Joker doesn’t reply. He doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t move at all, not even when Bruce finally steps away and moves past him to the door. 

He leaves Joker there in the parlor, going through the metal doors, and as soon as he does he rushes down to the cave as fast as he can. He doesn’t bump into anyone on the way and is grateful for it — he wouldn’t be able to explain the lipstick stains now if he tried. 

He activates the cameras as soon as he gets to the control station, then sits down and watches as Joker lies down on the fluffy carpet, his pants open, his pale cock in his hand. He looks like he’s waiting for something but then he chooses a camera to look into and focuses on it, and doesn’t smile, doesn’t say anything at all, hardly even blinks as he begins to give himself slow, even strokes, squeezing down on himself in a way that looks almost painful. 

Bruce keeps his word and watches him, and opens the codpiece to take his own cock in hand, and matches his strokes to Joker’s. He counts under his breath. 

One, two, three. One, two, three. One two three, one two three…

It doesn’t take long at all before they’re both coming, not quite at the same time but close enough, and once he recovers Bruce isolates the recording from the main feed to hide it away with the other tape. His hands shake as he does so, and continue to shake even as he finally drags himself into the shower.

He stands there for a long time, and decides to skip patrol that night. He wouldn’t be any use if he went. His head brims much too full with mouths and hands and eyes and sighs and Joker, and desire for Joker, and love for Joker.

Desire which is returned. Love, which is returned.

Bruce spends the rest of the night in his own bed thinking about it, and remembering, and doesn’t quite smile. It’s much too early for that, and there are more difficult conversations to be had. 

He feels light and heady all the same, right until the sun peeks over the horizon and sleep finally lures him in with dreams of red mouth and pale hands, promising, _Soon._


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay everyone, there was... a lot of ground to cover. As you'll see for yourselves.
> 
> A few things to share before we dive in: please check out this [stunning piece of fanart for chapter 12 by Mellie that I very much want over my bed](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/154027653033/mellie-art-from-chapter-12-of-half-way-across-by). *fans self* Also joe-kerrs shared [a fully colored page from their comic based on the fight from chapter 11 which is just too cool for words](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/155353703053/joe-kerrs-ive-been-sitting-on-this-for-a-while) *o*. In other news, there's an RP thread started over [here](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/154088032948/clownpriince-i-dont-want-to-hurt-you-i-dont) that is inspired by HWA, taking the general premise, only it adapts the fic to Nolanverse batjokes. Very interesting stuff!
> 
> Now, a couple of warnings: if I weren't a lazy Dracze and bothered to think about chapter names, this one would be called "Consequences." And it's dark. This is the least healthy Bruce has ever been in this story, and we all know that is saying something. There's themes of mental health and a therapy session, and a description of an anxiety attack - both in the middle of the story, scenes in Leslie's clinic - as well as pretty explicit violence with blood and erotic BDSM undercurrents in the very last scene. I hope it doesn't put you off, but if it does, please keep in mind that this IS Bruce's lowest point and he's strill struggling through everything, starting with self-acceptance. In the next chapters things will get easier again, but we have to wade through the ugly first, and Bruce isn't exactly known for healthy coping techniques. I just want you to be ready - this probably won't be a pleasant read.
> 
> Still, I hope you'll enjoy it regardless, and please let me know what you think! Many thanks to Mitzvah and to everyone else who helped me flesh this chapter out <3
> 
> (HWA is going to be 1 year old this month, on January 23rd. Holy shit. *rubs eyes*)

Sitting at the ancient mammoth-sized kitchen table with bright afternoon sunlight still holding onto the grounds outside, Bruce looks at the faces of his family. 

They’ve all assembled here when he asked them to and are now displaying various stages of apprehension typical of anyone who’s just heard the words “we need to talk”: Dick, trying so very hard to maintain an encouraging expression but blinking just a tad too often; Jason, tight and rigid, ostentatiously staring down into his Wayne Tech smartphone as though the glare of bluish sterile light can shield him from what’s about to happen, and, in contrast, hardly blinking at all; and Alfred, his sharp keen eyes a touch of life in a face that is, otherwise, a model of composure. Maybe they already suspect what he’s going to tell them. Bruce thinks Dick certainly does. He isn’t all that sure it’s a comfort. 

_Barbara should be here, too_ , rends through his mind, and Bruce looks down, knowing full well just why she isn’t. It’s because when it comes to things that matter Bruce is a coward, and just this once, he wants to measure out the blows if he can. With Jason, Bruce still has a tentative, trembling flicker of hope. But Barbara won’t want to have anything to do with him after this, and he isn’t quite ready to face that just yet. 

He opens his mouth…

He looks at Jason’s face, and then at Alfred’s, and closes it again. 

He could lose them. Both, or just one, but either way, he _could_. He only has seconds left in which he can still call them both his; in which he still has the right to sit in their company. The oldest friend and supporter he’s ever had, and a child he’d sworn to protect as his own. As the thought strikes something in his mind changes gears, and time seems to trickle into a near stand-still, and each of those remaining seconds stretches and stretches and stretches until the moment spreads too thin to seem real anymore. 

He knew the cost going in, he reminds himself. It’s far too late for second-guessing. All that’s left to do now is to face what he’s done, and pay whatever price he has to… 

And he’s terrified. Even more terrified than he was facing Joker. Because when he’d gambled then he was playing to win something, and even though a part of him knew that he was also possibly trading something else away it didn’t seem real as it was happening. Not when he saw the smile on Joker’s face, and not when he made his promises into warm arms and welcoming lips and won hope in return.

It does feel real now. And away from Joker’s room and the warmth of his skin, in the sobering light of day, Bruce isn’t all that sure that the choice he made was the right one, anymore.

But right or wrong, it’s happened, so he stifles the impulse to run and stays put. He lets his index finger trace down the smoothness of his coffee mug, warmed up now from both the hot liquid inside and the heat of Bruce’s hands. 

The mug has the bat symbol on it. It was a Christmas present from Dick. Dick had traced the pattern out of a batarang over cardboard and cut it and sprayed it over the mug under Alfred’s watchful eye (which Bruce knows about because Alfred had shown him the pictures). Bruce’s eye catches on the little bat, and as it does, his throat catches with it.

Doing this in the kitchen was a mistake.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred prompts. “We’re ready when you are.”

Bruce can’t peel his eyes away from the little bat symbol, and thinks, definitely a mistake. The kitchen is the one place in the Manor that still feels warm and homely, and like family. Maybe not the family Bruce remembers, not the sunny mornings with Alfred and Mom and Dad with the air rich with coffee and pancakes and laughter and love, but a family all the same, and just as important to him with new aromas of its own ( _Dick helping Alfred with the omelettes. Jason assembling a BLT as Bruce reads the paper. Alfred smiling at him and making him hot chocolate as he chides him for getting up at three pm._ ). In here, the other world — the world of Batman and the world of Joker — has always felt distant enough that Bruce could shrug it off, even if just for a blink, and it’s probably the only place left where that is still possible. This is why Bruce had chosen it in the first place — for its warmth, for its reassuring safety. He’d hoped it would fortify him and carry him through. 

But as he sits here, one thing becomes starkly, abundantly clear: the Joker really doesn’t belong in here. Thoughts of the Joker, even all the new warmer, softer thoughts, don’t belong in here. Across the kitchen threshold the clown fades from a stark and all-too-real presence to a distant silhouette, and with him, up to a point, so do all of Bruce’s complicated feelings towards him. 

That doesn’t change the fact that deep down, he can’t really deny that although Joker doesn’t belong in this kitchen _yet_ , a tiny part of Bruce is beginning to hope that one day, he… might.

He tries to picture Joker sitting next to him by the kitchen isle in his loose pajamas, eating Alfred’s pancakes and commenting on Bruce’s choice of coffee. The image jars like a buzz of static interrupting a game show broadcast during a storm. It’s too far removed from his reality. It doesn’t want to fit. Right now, Bruce can’t imagine ever _making_ it fit. 

But he remembers that he’s felt this exact same way the night he drove Joker back to Arkham and Joker said yes. That image also didn’t want to fit, and Bruce couldn’t imagine, back then, that it ever might.

Now look at them both. 

Bruce’s world can stretch. It can accommodate. He knows that now. He’s been making it bigger and bigger for years, whether he wanted to or not, and the faces around this table today are living proof. Maybe a sleepy Joker in pajamas drinking coffee with him in the mornings is a ludicrous idea now, and maybe it will always stay that way, but…

Bruce looks at the little bat on his mug. 

No escape, he thinks. Even if it means having to choose. If he does this, now… 

They’ll be one step closer to the _maybe_. To all sorts of _maybes_ , the bad and the… different. 

He looks up. He cradles the mug a little closer to his chest, hiding the bat with his hand.

 _Just do this_ , he tells himself. _You’ll pick up the pieces later. Whatever’s left. You’ve done this before._

The thought doesn’t make him feel any better, but the faces around the table are getting restless. He needs to just… speak. And see what happens.

He needs to respect them all enough to try. 

“I’m sorry,” he starts, “I’m not… sure how to do this.”

“Actually talking might be a good start,” Jason mutters. He’s leaning back in his chair and keeping his head bowed over the phone, scrolling. Bruce has a feeling he’s keeping his feet off the table only because Alfred is here.

Bruce wonders if it’s not too late to relocate them somewhere where the specter of this conversation won’t forever taint the one truly domestic space they have left. 

He holds the mug tighter.

“I need to talk to you all about the Joker,” he manages. “There… there might be some changes in the future.”

God, even saying this much feels like he’s just fought off a giant space monster all on his own, only the result is more dread instead of the usual sense of satisfaction after a job well done. He lets out a breath, and thinks, _It’s done._ He forces his own stiff neck muscles to move and faces the results. 

On the surface, not that much has changed. Dick’s expression has grown somewhat strained and Jason is holding himself even stiffer, and concern muddies Alfred’s calm eyes, but other than that, they’re still here. They’re still listening, still waiting. 

Right.

“As you know, I went to talk to him last night,” he starts again, clearing his throat, his face heating up, “and we… reached an understanding. There’s a good chance that if he ever does get better, he… he might move in here.” Bruce gazes down into the black swirl in his mug. “For good.”

Silence.

Dick is the first to react, which isn’t a surprise. Meeting his eyes isn’t quite as difficult as looking at the others and even though the memory of their conversation still sits cold and heavy in Bruce’s gut, he can’t help but be grateful for it right now.

“So nothing’s actually gonna change all that much,” Dick observes, struggling to keep a playful tone. “Right? I mean. He’s already moved in. So either way we’re not getting rid of him.”

Bruce wants to groan. God. Dick is trying so hard to diffuse the tension and Bruce is so grateful he can barely keep it out of his face, but the clam-up is already building in his throat and he knows he’s going to have to _wrestle_ each new word out of himself the longer this thing goes on, and he doesn’t have all that many of them to begin with. Making light of things is only going to make it all worse. 

“I don’t mean as a prisoner,” he corrects with some difficulty, fighting through the thickening miasma on his tongue. “He’d be a…” Oh God. He swallows. He has no idea how to even phrase it, and his face no longer feels hot — it’s gone all cold instead. “A resident,” he decides. And refuses to let out anything further than that.

Dick releases a sound that’s somewhere halfway to a snicker before he can salvage it with a fake cough. He covers his mouth with his hand. He mutters, “Is that what the kids are calling it now?”

Jason is still staring at his phone, even though he hasn’t moved a finger over it since Bruce started talking. His mouth is a thin, thin line, and getting thinner still. Bruce doesn’t dare look at Alfred.

Silence.

“Right, so,” Dick says eventually, drawing Bruce’s eyes to himself again. He’s resting his arms on the table, hunching over, letting hair fall over his young, young face. “Guess I’m gonna have to be the spokesman here. And I know I speak for everyone when I say none of it is exactly a surprise.” 

He glances to Jason. So does Bruce. Jason is still refusing to look up from the phone, but his mouth is twisting, and Bruce’s heart is too. 

Dick clears his throat. “Though I am pretty… shocked, I guess? That you actually went and talked to him. That’s… big. That why you cut the cameras?”

Bruce forces a nod. 

“Huh. Okay. Probably better this way.” Dick sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “Damn,” he mumbles, letting his gaze drop to the gleaming table surface. He gives it a small, rueful smile. “I was gonna make some stupid joke about how I hope you guys used protection,” he says, “but actually, I don’t think I can. Sorry, Bruce. I know we talked and all but it’s… wow. It’s hard.”

Bruce’s eyes escape to the table, too. They trace swirly patterns in the marble.

“I know,” he whispers.

“I mean. I want to respect your feelings, but with everything he’s done…”

“I know.”

“We’re just gonna need time.”

“I know.”

“Right.” Dick lets out a long breath, sitting back in the chair. “Right. So long as you don’t expect us to be ecstatic.”

“I don’t,” Bruce assures him — all of them — quietly, making himself look up. He seeks out Dick’s eyes and moors himself to the stubborn, unrelenting support he finds there. “I know it’s asking a lot,” he says earnestly. “And I’m… sorry for putting you in this situation.”

That’s when Jason slams the phone onto the table with an ear-splitting crash that rends the delicate balance to shreds. 

“Horseshit,” he snaps, finally looking up to glare at Bruce, his face twisted up in fury. “You’re not fucking sorry. If you were you wouldn’t have gone to the clown in the first place!”

“Jason —”

“Tell him, Alfred!” Jason rages, turning to Alfred. “Grayson’s too far up his ass to tell the truth but _you_ must see what’s going on! So just — tell him that he can’t do that!”

The center of the room shifts to settle on Alfred. At this point Bruce has no choice but to let his eyes follow, and for the first time he faces what he’d been dreading the most.

Alfred’s eyes are on him. Suddenly Bruce gets the uncomfortable needle-pinprick certainty that he’ been staring at him for the entire conversation, and heat swells behind his eyes, especially when he takes notice of just how _old_ Alfred looks all of a sudden. Old and tired like Bruce has never seen him, with deep shadows under his eyes and his face lined in wrinkles and his mouth turned down and his normally-rigid shoulders hunched like he has no strength to keep them straight anymore, and his eyes holding so much heartbreak that Bruce can barely stand to witness it for more than a second.

In the quiet that follows, Alfred asks, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Bruce blinks. Tries to find his voice. “What?”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Alfred repeats, and his voice is quiet. Worn out. Thin, and old.

Bruce holds his gaze, suddenly unable to look away now even if he tried. He doesn’t understand. Of all the questions Alfred could ask…

“Who cares!” Jason shouts into the void of silence that drapes over the kitchen following Alfred’s words. Once again the attention in the room pivots to him, and in its light, he gets to his feet. Bruce manages to blink back the tears pressing at his eyes and faces him, although Alfred’s expression still clings to him, settling dark and heavy over his shoulders.

“I can’t believe this,” Jason accuses, glaring at not just Bruce now but at Alfred and Dick, too. “He never said anything because he was ashamed! And with good reason! Are you two serious right now? You’re not gonna call him out at all?!”

Dick presses a hand to his forehead. “Sit down, Jay.”

“Fucking _no_. I’m not gonna sit here and listen to you talking like this isn’t — like he’s not — What about Babs, Grayson? Or have you forgotten about that already?”

“I’ll never forget,” Dick says fiercely. “But this isn’t about —”

“Fucking _listen to yourselves_! You’re not making any sense! And you —” He locks his eyes with Bruce’s.

Bruce holds his gaze. The moment charges, like a night just before a lightning strike. Distantly, a part of Bruce’s brain wonders if he’ll have to defend himself physically from his own adopted son. 

But then Jason just shakes his head and strides out of the kitchen, slamming the door until it rattles on its hinges.

“Jason —” Dick starts, but Bruce is out of the chair before he is.

“I’ll take care of this,” he decides. “It’s my mess.”

He rushes out after Jason into the hall. 

It’s easier to breathe, out here in the open, chasing Jason upstairs. Away from Dick’s attempts to cloak his heartbreak, away from Alfred’s naked one. Away from the air tainted thick and muddy with too many uncomfortable confessions. The further he gets from the kitchen the clearer his mind becomes, and he thinks, Jason’s anger is familiar. He’s been ready for it, and he can at least try to handle it. What’s about to happen next will hurt, but it’s a kind of hurt Bruce knows by now he can shoulder. He can open himself up to Jason’s shots, if that’s what it takes. 

“Jason,” he calls. “Jason!”

Jason ignores him. His feet thunder across the floor until he reaches his own room and promptly shuts himself in. 

Bruce stops before the door. He tries, “Let me in.” 

“Fuck off!”

“No. You have to listen to me. Let me explain.”

“I don’t have to do anything!” Jason yells through the door. “And I sure as shit don’t want to listen to you talk about how it’s not a big deal that you wanna fuck the clown!”

“I never said that it isn’t a big deal,” Bruce counters quietly, powering right through the sting in Jason’s words. He’s always found it easier to stay calm when other people are angry. In that way, Jason’s reaction is almost a relief, because now at least Bruce can fall back on his own tried and tested instincts. 

“I know this is difficult,” he forces. “It is for me, too. I never expected things would turn out this way, but they have, and now I have to think of —”

“I don’t care, Bruce. Okay? I don’t want to hear any of it.”

“I can keep him from hurting other people,” Bruce presses nonetheless, because he knows he has to at least try and explain. “If he’s with me,” he implores, “if I can get through to him…”

“God, you’re such a hypocrite!” Jason yells. “You keep telling me that I’m too brutal when I fight _criminals_ but you’re totally fine getting touchy-feely with a guy who singlehandedly keeps the undertakers in business?! Are you for fucking real?!”

“I’m not _totally fine_ with this,” Bruce protests. “I’m not ignoring what he’s done. But things are what they are and if I can use my influence to stop him from killing, don’t you think that’s worth a shot?”

“Right, because that’s totally what this is about. It’s not at all about you wanting to suck face with the guy who’s the reason Barbara’s in that chair.”

Bruce winces. He makes himself take a few deep breaths to steady himself, find his balance. He touches Jason’s door.

“I don’t expect you to accept the situation overnight,” he says. “Nothing may change for a very long time. Maybe before it does, you’ll…” He pauses. Works his throat. Changes course. “I’ll respect your feelings no matter what happens,” he promises. “I understand if you don’t want to give him any chances. Just… don’t do anything rash, all right? Take the night off. Maybe we’ll talk in the morning.”

Silence. The door stares him down, and Bruce lets his hand drop.

It’s a long way down the stairs back to the hall, every step a struggle; but when he sees Alfred waiting at the bottom of the staircase, he’s almost tempted to turn back and let Jason yell at him some more. Alfred is still wearing that same heartbreaking expression and Bruce knows it will feature prominently in his nightmares for the foreseeable future.

Because he’s disappointed Alfred. He’s broken Alfred’s heart. That alone is enough to block his throat all over again, and he’s not ready to hear the confirmation of that come from Alfred’s own mouth. 

Still, he struggles to drag himself over to him, pausing with his hand on the railing, feeling small and inadequate and wishing the ground under his feet could just swallow him up. He isn’t ready to look into those worn, tired eyes up close. Isn’t ready to face the rejection he’s sure to find there. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I really am. You must believe me that I never meant —”

Alfred’s face sort of… crumples, folds in on itself, the lines deepening, creasing age into his skin, painting his eyes impossibly sadder. Bruce can’t stand the sight. He looks away, and struggles to find his breath, and the tears are back to stabbing insistently at his eyes, and all at once he rushes, “I know you’re ashamed of me, I know it’s terrible, and I’ll understand if you — if you want to leave —”

“Bruce.” 

There is a hand on his shoulder. Firm, warm. Squeezing through the fabric, like it did so many times in the past. Bruce takes a weak, stuttering breath but he can’t make himself look up, even when another hand grabs his other shoulder, turning him to face Alfred fully.

“Bruce,” Alfred repeats softly, “my dear boy. I’m so sorry.”

It’s the shock alone that finally makes him look up, wide-eyed, the dread still choking him so that he can’t even voice the _What?_.

“I failed you,” Alfred whispers, still tightly holding onto his shoulders as though he’s afraid that Bruce will slip away if he lets go. His eyes glimmer, and Bruce completely freezes at the sight — it feels like the bedrock that’s held him up for most of his life, to the point where he stopped seeing it as such, suddenly gave way, suddenly crumbled, and he doesn’t know what to do in the face of any of it. “I failed you more than I ever realized,” Alfred is saying, “if you felt you couldn’t come to me with a matter that must have caused you so much grief.”

Bruce blinks. The tears are beginning to slip out down his face and he doesn’t even notice. 

“I don’t understand.” 

“Nobody chooses to fall in love,” Alfred says, tightening his hold on Bruce to the point of pain. “Not even you can do that. You must have felt so alone, and even though I could see the signs, I… hesitated, and waited, and I never offered to help, never asked you to share any of the burden.”

“That’s not —” Bruce swallows hard, tries to relocate a semblance of his own voice. “It’s not your fault. I just — I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to worry you, and I was afraid you might…”

He closes up, the familiar blockade rising up at the back of his mouth, and if possible, Alfred looks even sadder.

“You were afraid I’d leave you,” he finishes for him, barely above a whisper.

Bruce drops his head.

Silence.

And then the hands on Bruce’s shoulders pull him closer, pull him in, and there’s two old, bony arms closing around his neck, and his head is cradled against the soft fabric of Alfred’s jacket. It smells the way it always does — of Alfred’s pine-scented fabric softener and polishing paste, and Alfred’s cologne, the same one he’s used probably since before Bruce was born. It smells like warmth and childhood, and tears and rainy graveyards, and tea and sandwiches and disinfectant at 4 in the morning. Alfred’s hold on him is tight and strong with the same desperate need to hold on, or maybe to forestall any attempts to fight it, but it isn’t necessary — in this single moment Bruce feels weaker than a baby and wouldn’t be able to break away if he tried.

“I did fail you,” Alfred is saying, forcefully now, and as Bruce is beginning to shake his head he insists, “I did, if you can’t trust me to stand by you when you need it most.”

Bruce is crying into his shoulder now, his eyes squeezed shut, and Alfred holds him even closer. 

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “And please let me put that to rest right now: I am not leaving here, not even if you hired a team of bulldozers to pry me away.”

Bruce brings his own arms up around him, returning the embrace, letting himself be hugged as if he was still eight years old. He feels eight, so it’s not that difficult to allow himself this much.

Still, he can’t quite let himself accept it, and whispers, “But he’s — but I’m —”

“Love should never be a source of shame,” Alfred tells him, with strange intensity. “Never. Like I said, we don’t get to choose when it happens, or whom it chooses. I’m never going to abandon you over choice of partner.”

Bruce breathes in and closes his eyes again, letting the hug last just a little longer just as Alfred’s words finally begin to sink in. Alfred tightens his hold almost imperceptibly, but Bruce notices, and tightens his own in acknowledgment before finally, slowly, pulling away. 

“So…” He starts, and pauses to wipe his eyes on the back of his hand. He meets Alfred’s eyes again, still not quite ready to let himself believe. “So you don’t… disapprove?”

“Now, let us not go quite that far.” Alfred is offering a smile for him now, a crooked, fragile one that’s so much closer to the Alfred Bruce knows best that already it’s much easier to breathe. “Naturally I wish nothing but the best for you. That man is… not.”

“So you are disappointed,” Bruce translates.

“Just a smidgen,” Alfred admits. “Not with you, dear boy — with fate. I had rather hoped you and miss Kyle might eventually, in time… reconnect.”

“Well.” Bruce rubs the back of his neck. “That’s not happening.” _And Selina is better off for it._

“Obviously.” Alfred sighs. He still looks tired, but some of the light is coming back to his eyes. “You must not begrudge an old man his fantasies of peace and tranquility for you somewhere down the line. Your choice of partner is hardly likely to bring you either.” 

Bruce hangs his head. “I know. It’s going to be — hard.”

“Indeed.” Alfred’s smile turns rueful. “Still, you never were one to make things easy on yourself so I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised that you’d choose the most difficult path even where the heart is concerned.” 

Bruce thinks there may be warmth, even an exasperated kind of fondness under the admonition, but he doesn’t quite dare to accept it even now. His heart releases all the same, and grows an inch or two. 

He won’t lose Alfred. To know that, to have it confirmed… Bruce doesn’t know if he’ll ever have the words to articulate how much it means right here and now. 

“I’ll need your help,” he confesses.

“What else is new,” Alfred parries, and this time there is definitely a dry smile in that sentence. Bruce breathes out and lets it, and everything it brings to the table, warm him as much as it can. “I just hope you don’t expect me to let him into my kitchen right away… or call him ‘sir’.” 

They both wince. Bruce can’t even imagine it happening. 

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he decides. “His therapy might take years. And a lot can change in the meantime. He could decide he doesn’t want to move in after all.” 

“But you want him to, don’t you,” Alfred asks quietly.

Bruce takes a moment. He confesses, “Yes.”

There’s a spell of silence. And then Alfred clears his throat. “Well then, I suppose I had better start getting used to the idea,” he says, adopting his normal, distinguished, sarcastic tone. “And hide the good china. And maybe child-proof all the rooms again while I’m at it. For the record, I never had to do this for either of the young masters.”

Amused by this despite all the weight of the moment, Bruce points out, “Joker isn’t a child.”

“He isn’t a very good clown either and yet, that doesn’t deter him from trying.” Alfred eyes Bruce as though realizing something for the first time, and then judges, “I suppose I do see where some of the attraction might come from. With his flair for the dramatics, the Joker should fit right in.”

“That’s not very funny, Alfred,” Bruce comments, barely containing his own smile.

“Neither is he,” Alfred parries without missing a beat. “But I shall try to contain my skepticism. That’s as much as I can promise for now,” he warns. “I’m afraid he’ll have to earn anything else himself.”

Bruce nods. “That’s already more than I can ask of you.” He pauses, and then adds, “Thank you.”

It’s Alfred who looks away this time. “Yes, well. Let’s take things one crisis at a time, shall we?” he says. “I’ll talk to young Master Jason. Maybe Master Richard,” he glances pointedly at the doors to the kitchen, “has an idea how you can keep yourself occupied till nightfall.”

Bruce follows the path of his gaze to see Dick gingerly stepping into the hall, face burning. 

“Hi. Um.” He offers them a sheepish smile. “I definitely wasn’t eavesdropping.”

“Perish the thought,” Alfred comments with a twinkle in his eye.

“So Bruce, you wanna go down to the cave?” Dick turns to Bruce now, ignoring him. “We could… work on some cases. Maybe see if we can find a trace of Ivy or Harleen.”

Bruce gives them both a grateful smile that feels entirely inadequate as an expression of the warmth spilling all over his heart. 

“Sounds good,” he tells Dick. 

Alfred pats Bruce’s arm comfortingly as he passes him on the way up, to Jason’s room. Bruce gives himself a moment to watch his retreating back. Then he calls, “Alfred.”

Alfred stops in his tracks and turns to face him. “Yes?”

“I won’t let him hurt you,” Bruce promises. “If he ever tries, I’ll stand in his way. For you, too,” he tells Dick. “For all of you. He’s not getting out until I’m absolutely sure you won’t be in danger.”

Slowly, Alfred nods. Dick puts a hand on his arm.

“Come on, old man,” he says. “We both need a rest after all the dramatics.”

Bruce nods. When he moves to join Dick on the way to the library, it is with a much lighter mind than just a few minutes ago, although he knows all too well he’s not out in the clear just yet. It’s far too early to start feeling hopeful. For one thing he still needs to talk to Barbara, and that will be a whole other emotional struggle, but…

But he’s not alone in this. He’s got people in his corner, even now, even despite… everything.

When he follows Dick down into the cave, the glimmer of a smile still lingers just on the verge of slipping out. 

 

***

 

“Give him time,” Dick suggests quietly when they stand on the roof of Wayne Tower later that night, watching the crawl of traffic below. “He might come around.”

Bruce gives him a sidelong glance. “I’m not so sure.”

Dick shrugs. “Me neither, but who knows? I’m still kinda processing it too. Though granted, I’ve had much more time to think about it. I think Jason preferred to stay in denial.” 

They stand side by side, letting the winds push and pull at their backs. “He wasn’t the only one,” Bruce says quietly.

“Well, shit.” Dick looks at him with incredulity under the Nightwing mask. “You’re actually admitting it!”

“Don’t push it, Nightwing.”

“Sorry. Just, let me have this. Wow. Wow.”

He gives himself some time to cherish the moment in silence, and Bruce doesn’t interrupt it. He wouldn’t know what to say in the first place.

“So, who’s next?” Dick asks eventually. “Barbara?”

Bruce swallows the sigh that wants to steal out into the thick night air. 

“Barbara,” he agrees. 

Dick’s face settles into something frighteningly somber. 

“Good luck,” he says, and Bruce nods in thanks. 

He knows he’s going to need it.

 

***

 

Barbara’s window in her old bedroom in Jim’s house is open. When Bruce perches on the windowsill it is to the sight of her practicing her upper body strength, inching across a set of railings on bulging, trembling arms. Perspiration beads over her strained muscles and down her temple; there’s a vein jutting out over her brow from exertion. She doesn’t look at Bruce. She groans quietly as she makes it to the end of the railing, her legs trailing behind her, and then inches backwards towards the chair waiting at the spot where she started. 

Bruce doesn’t say anything until she collapses into it with a sigh, sweeping away the strands of hair that have escaped from her tight ponytail. Only then does she look at him. She is panting, and her face gleams with sweat. She holds Bruce’s eyes for a moment before she wheels herself over to the bathroom.

Bruce slips into the room. He stays by the window.

“Barbara.”

“I know why you’re here,” she says, her voice quiet but still carrying easily into the room. 

Bruce chews on the inside of his cheek before he can stop himself. “Dick told you?”

“He didn’t need to.” She wheels out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her neck. She’s put glasses on, and is glaring at Bruce over the rim with all the warmth of Clark’s arctic fortress. “I saw the recent tapes. That was quite a stunt you pulled with that pill.”

She turns away from him. Which is a good thing, because if she hadn’t, Bruce would have. God.

“What, you’re not gonna tell me off for hacking into your system again?” Barbara snaps, bitterly.

“No,” Bruce whispers. 

She lets him stew before she minces, “Fireworks, huh? You sure know how to make a guy feel special.”

“Barbara…” But of course he doesn’t know what he could possibly follow it up with. _I’m sorry_ wouldn’t cut it here. And worse, she’d know that he doesn’t really mean it all the way. 

He doesn’t regret the fireworks. He doesn’t regret the pill. Not in the way she’d want him to. So he says nothing, and waits for her judgment. 

It’s a long time coming, but finally she turns halfway towards him and says, “If you ever need Oracle, I’ll help you. But beyond that I don’t want to talk to you. So don’t try.”

Bruce lets out a breath. He manages a tight, “All right.”

“We’re not friends. We’re not family. We’re people who have similar purposes and may work together from time to time, but that’s it.” 

“All right.”

“If that ever changes, I’ll let you know. But don’t hold your breath.”

Bruce bites back another _All right._ Barbara is done with him; there’s nothing more to be said. 

So he steals out of her room as quietly as he came in, and doesn’t linger to see the cold hardness in her eyes.

 

***

 

He stops by Jason’s bedroom before he goes to bed that morning. He raps against the door.

“Jason?”

Nothing. 

He tries the handle, but the door is locked from the inside. He waits another few beats, but nothing happens.

Right.

So Bruce hauls himself to bed and tries to breathe through the tangle of worms wriggling in his stomach until, eventually, the bone-deep exhaustion and headache combine to pull him under. 

 

***

 

He’s woken by Alfred’s frantic voice, and a face so creased with concern he barely recognizes it at the first few blinks. 

“What’s wrong,” he mumbles, trying to shake off the dust of restless sleep still clinging to the edges of his mind. “Joker —?”

“It’s Master Jason,” Alfred tells him. “He’s gone.”

Bruce opens his eyes as far as they’ll go, suddenly wide awake. “What?”

Instead of explaining, Alfred gives him a sheet of paper, and Bruce sits up to read it through the cold, cold dread that scrapes him raw.

The note is short, scrawled in Jason’s messy, hurried hand. It reads:

_I got a lead on my mother and I’m going away to look for her. Don’t go after me. You can take the price of the motorbike out of my trust fund, I don’t want it anymore._

There’s no signature, and instead, the tracker Bruce had attached to Jason’s bike is taped to the bottom of the note, bent out of shape, bits of wire sticking out of the now-dead circuitry. 

Bruce looks up and faces the distress that’s etched deep into Alfred’s skin.

“I’m sorry,” he forces out, holding the letter tight.

“Master Richard went after him,” Alfred informs Bruce quietly. “With any luck, he’ll bring him home.”

Bruce nods. He doesn’t believe it though, and he thinks that deep down, neither does Alfred.

 

***

 

Dick doesn’t bring Jason home. Nor does he return to the Manor himself. When he calls Bruce three days later it’s from New York, telling Bruce that he did catch up with Jason but lost track of him again, and that he’ll be going back to Bludhaven for a while.

“It’s not what you think,” he says quickly, as if he’s somehow able to sense the plunge in Bruce’s thoughts all the way in New York. “I’m not cutting ties or anything. I promised I wouldn’t and I’m not going to, but… I do need some time away. I think I’m finally gonna apply to the academy. You know… Do my own thing for a while.”

Bruce needs a second or two to make sure his voice doesn’t leak anything he doesn’t want it to. “Okay.”

“Will you be all right?”

“I… yes.”

“Jason’s fine,” Dick assures him. “He’s a smart kid. And the good news is he hasn’t thrown away his debit card so you still have a way to support him.”

That almost makes Bruce smile even through the concrete-thick sheen of worry. “You talked him into it, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah,” Dick admits, almost reluctantly. “He’s almost as stubborn as you are. But practical, too. He only made me promise you wouldn’t try to track him, so, you know. Don’t make me break my word.”

“I… won’t try to see him until he’s ready,” Bruce decides with some difficulty. 

“Way to go straight for the loophole there, Bruce. You are going to track him, aren’t you?”

“I need to make sure he’s safe,” Bruce insists.

“Yeah, thought so. I suppose that’s gotta be good enough,” Dick allows. There’s a tight pause. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, Dick,” Bruce lies, trying for a reassuring tone and ending up with something that he fears makes him sound constipated. He changes the subject before Dick can call him out. “When you apply, let me pay your tuition fees like we agreed. And tell me if there’s anything else you need.”

“We’ll see about that,” Dick sighs, sounding resigned. “You take care of Alfred and, uh… keep clown boy in check, yeah? I’ll be seeing you.”

Bruce hangs up and turns to Alfred, who’s been hovering in the doorway to the library, listening. 

“I suppose that means Master Richard won’t join us for dinner any time soon,” Alfred whispers, sad creases around his eyes.

“No.” Bruce sighs, wondering just how much his own face mirrors Alfred’s. “Looks like it’s just the two of us again.”

“Three,” Alfred corrects after a tense minute. 

He looks up at the ceiling, and impulsively, so does Bruce. In the uneasy silence that follows Bruce imagines the sound of restless footsteps over their heads even though the soundproofing in Joker’s rooms catches everything before it can sneak out to haunt the rest of the Manor.

He regrets that decision now. 

“The house is going to seem so quiet,” Alfred says after a moment, echoing Bruce’s thoughts. “I’ve got… rather used to having children around.”

Bruce nods. So has he. The _I’m sorrys_ are already lining up in his mouth but he knows they won’t do either of them any good, so instead he walks past Alfred and makes his way down to the cave and tries to work his feelings away. 

When that doesn’t seem to achieve much, he gathers the Wayne persona about him and goes to Joker. They watch a movie together. Halfway through Joker presses his feet against Bruce’s thigh and Bruce doesn’t do anything to stop him.

 

***

 

He’s surprised when, the following evening, Alfred comes down to the cave bearing not only his usual plate of food but also a small yellow sticky note. 

“What’s this?” Bruce asks when Alfred pointedly fixes the note to the central monitor, right in Bruce’s line of sight.

“A reminder,” Alfred informs him. 

“Alfred.”

“I have taken the liberty of securing an appointment for you with Doctor Leslie Thompkins,” Alfred explains, and Bruce is so surprised he sits back and swivels to face him.

“Leslie?” he parrots. “Why?”

“Because it’ll be good for you.”

Bruce glares at him. Alfred glares right back. “If you’re trying to intimidate me, Master Bruce, please keep in mind that I did change your nappies,” he warns. “Now, Leslie was quite pleased to hear you’ll be coming and it would be rude to disappoint her.”

“But I don’t need a doctor,” Bruce protests. 

“Debatable,” Alfred judges, giving him a critical once-over topped with an eyebrow lift that makes Bruce feel all of seven years old. “A proper check-up wouldn’t do you any harm, sir. But that’s not why I arranged the meeting. If I may be so bold, Master Bruce, you need to talk to a professional. She’s the best choice we have.”

Finally the implication sinks in, and as it does, something small and vulnerable inside Bruce sinks, too. His face pulls tight. Contrariness stomps a foot and lunges to stick up his throat like a fishbone. 

“But Leslie’s a GP. She’s not a therapist,” he argues.

“Master Bruce, Leslie has held a therapist license for roughly as long as you’ve been alive.”

Bruce’s eyebrows ride up as he stares at Alfred, mouth open. “But…”

Alfred’s gaze softens, and as it does, understanding dawns.

“So all those times she came over before,” Bruce says slowly, staring past Alfred now and into the memories he’d really rather not revisit. “All the times she talked to me. You said it was because she was your friend.”

“She was,” Alfred agrees, coming closer now, the bite gone to be replaced by a worried air of pity Bruce cannot stand to see. “And she still is. She came to see you because I asked her to. But I did so in the first place because I had hoped that she would be able to help.”

Bruce hangs his head, to escape the look in Alfred’s eyes as much as to collect his own scrambling mind. He’s having some difficulty deciding how to feel about this revelation. It’s not exactly a sense of betrayal, as such, but… 

He doesn’t really like to remember anything from that time, for obvious reasons. But even if he tried — and he did — it’s difficult to forget the steady parade of well-meaning therapists, all of them trying to wear the same identical worried expressions as they probed and probed and _probed_ him with invasive questions his 8-year-old self had no idea how to answer until he felt raw and small and more alone than even before. He doesn’t want to associate Leslie, with her warm hugs and work-rough hands and kind, understanding silences, with any of them. It feels wrong.

“Please don’t think that she was just pretending to be your friend because I asked her to,” Alfred is quick to intervene, somehow sensing the direction Bruce’s thoughts have taken. “She is a friend. Just because she was trying to look out for you as well doesn’t mean she wasn’t sincere.”

Bruce breathes out and manages a tight nod, then presses his hands to his temples. Alfred’s probably right and he needs to get over himself. Leslie is a good person and she’s stayed a friend all through Bruce’s adulthood, even though — he realizes with a pang of remorse — Bruce himself has never made a proper effort to maintain contact. And she never lied to him. Talking to her did help him, even if just a little, and even if the feeling never truly lasted. 

Besides…

He thinks of flashing green eyes and biting words, and his own promises in return. Guilt nips at him viciously as he realizes that this really is the best option he has, and one he hasn’t even thought about when he gave Joker his word. 

“Fine,” he agrees. “I’ll go and… talk to her. I made a promise I would seek someone out anyway,” he confesses.

That seems to take Alfred by surprise. “To whom?” 

“To him,” Bruce says, pointing to one of the side screens that’s been commandeered to display the live feed from Joker’s rooms on a more or less permanent basis. 

Alfred’s eyes go wide. He turns to watch the screen and for once, he doesn’t seem to have a snide remark at the ready. Oblivious to the attention, Joker is busy doing crunches to the breathy, winded tune of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” which he hums with far too much gusto for someone who’s in the middle of strenuous physical exercise.

They both watch him in silence. Then Alfred turns back to Bruce.

“Explain?” he asks.

“That’s part of the deal,” Bruce tells him, eyes on Joker, something achy and fond fluttering in his throat and melting away bits of the fishbone edge there. “He made me promise I’d take up therapy while he’s here.”

“He did?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmm.” Alfred watches the screen some more, and as he does, there’s a bemused but closed-off air about him that Bruce can’t quite read. “Well now.” He clasps his hands behind his back. When he once again turns to Bruce his face is smoothened out of all expression save for his habitual butler face, but the tension in the set of his shoulders betrays the surprise still lingering over him. “I suppose that did work out rather nicely, then, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess,” Bruce allows reluctantly. A part of him _is_ relieved to discover he won’t have to seek out ‘proper’ therapists after all; he’d been dreading the thought ever since Joker introduced it. Leslie is… a good compromise, given the circumstances. For a start, she knows Bruce is Batman, which should make talking about certain things much easier, loath as he is to talk about anything at all. And besides, Bruce trusts her. He knows she’ll remain open and respectful no matter what, and won’t judge him, and that, at the very least, she’ll actually listen. 

He’s owed her a visit for ages anyway.

 

***

 

Bruce is used to seeing Leslie’s East End clinic at night, washed in dull streetlight and bustle of distracting activity, its dirtier, uglier parts mercifully cloaked in Gotham’s many rich black shadows. He thinks this might be why, as he gets out of one of his least flashy cars, the sight of peeling paint and various anatomically-incorrect graffiti and crumbling mortar, exposed down to the cruelest detail in daylight, gives him a start. He makes his way up the stairs to the main door slowly, cataloging all the wear and tear with a sinking heart, and shakes his head, more at himself than anything else. He doesn’t even remember the last time he was here, and during his visits as Batman he usually had more pressing things to worry about than the state of the masonry, but… 

No excuses, he tells himself firmly. He should have checked in on Leslie sooner.

He clears the entryway and manages to shush his own disquiet enough to flash a brilliant smile at the harassed-looking receptionist, who at the sight of him attempts to make herself appear marginally less harassed. 

“Mr Wayne!” she enthuses, sweeping long, mousy hair over one shoulder self-consciously. “How lovely to see you!”

“It’s been too long, er… Sarah?” Bruce makes a show of reading the girl’s nametag, although he remembers most of Leslie’s permanent staff pretty damn well. On one memorable occasion, Sarah Fairfax helped set Batman’s shoulder and did so with brisk efficiency despite her initial shock at seeing him stagger into the clinic in the dead of night. Bruce is comforted to see her still at her post, holding down the fort with Leslie even after so many years. 

“Leslie’s expecting you, but she’s with a patient at the moment,” Sarah explains, looking pained. “I’m so sorry but I’m afraid we’re running late. Maybe if you left me a phone number, I could let you know when the line lets up…?”

“No need,” Bruce decides, “I’ll wait.”

“But —”

“It’s no problem at all. To be honest it’s either that or death by board meeting, so you’re helping already,” Bruce assures her. “I’ll just help myself to a magazine, shall I? And please, call me Bruce.”

“Well, sure, but we only have _Teen Vogue_ and housekeeping weeklies,” Sarah informs him with an apologetic shrug.

“Excellent.” Bruce makes sure his grin stays appropriately wide. “Maybe I’ll finally manage to absorb some useful knowledge for a change.”

“Not that you need it,” Sarah observes. “Doesn’t your butler do all the cleaning?”

“Oh, he does. But it doesn’t hurt to learn some independence, don’t you think?”

“At what, forty?” Sarah’s eyes glimmer with amusement.

“Thirty six, actually,” Bruce corrects her. “That’s what I keep telling the ladies anyway.”

“Right. Off to a good start, I see.” Sarah’s smile turns crooked as she says, “I’m sure poor Alfred could write those housekeeping columns himself at this point.”

“I’m not altogether sure he hasn’t,” Bruce confesses in a stage whisper.

Sarah laughs. “Right this way then, Bruce —” she points with her arm — “room 06.”

“Thank you.” The parting grin he flashes her is genuine, and Bruce only struggles a little to keep it on his face as he makes his way to the waiting room.

Right up until he takes in the state of the people crowding it, and then the grin dies entirely on its own. 

There’s some children here; a girl with a bleeding knee, a boy hugging his own stomach with a pained expression as a worried mother strokes his back, another girl with her arm in a sling giving him a wide-eyed look of wonder. There’s a middle-aged woman with a bruised face and a split lip who, in contrast, doesn’t look at him, or at anyone in the room, and keeps her eyes fixed on the floor. An elderly lady bent nearly in half as she leans on a cane even sitting down, leafing through a glossy magazine. A burly, bearded middle-aged man who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, and who’s barely able to hold his eyes open as he peers at Bruce with a bleary expression Bruce recognizes from too many patrols outside Gotham’s legion of disreputable pubs.

He offers a strained smile at everyone as he finds himself a sliver of wall to lean against, attempting to look as inconspicuous as he can and wishing suddenly that he’d worn jeans and a t-shirt instead of the woolen pants and white shirt combo. This is the East End, and Leslie’s patients tend to be East End people to the bone. He’s sticking out like a sore thumb. 

To hide the awkward spell of self-consciousness Bruce makes good on his word and grabs for the pile of magazines to the old lady’s left. He flips through it to discover he’s picked up one of the housekeeping weeklies Sarah has warned him about, and he finds, to his own mortification, an article about himself in the celebrity gossip section.

“This one’s a useless rag,” the old lady informs him suddenly, glaring at the magazine in Bruce’s hands like Jim Gordon glares at nicotine patches. “Everyone knows you need lemon water to clean tea kettles properly, no expensive chemicals necessary.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Bruce admits. “I’ve been told I’m helpless in the kitchen.”

That’s not entirely true — he likes to think his homekeeping and culinary skills, while limited, are perfectly adequate to see him through whenever work takes him out of Gotham for any extended period of time. Which doesn’t exactly stop Alfred from disparaging him any chance he gets.

“Men ought to know how to cook,” the lady grumbles, directing her cutting glare at Bruce. “You can’t always expect your wife to do it for you.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Bruce replies, and chooses not to add that the chances of him ever getting a wife have at this point plunged into the negative numbers. 

The old lady harrumphs, still radiating disapproval, and despite himself, Bruce finds her militant attitude engaging. He lets himself be drawn into a lengthy and startlingly educational tirade about the many and varied applications of lemon water, which continues on as the line slowly thins, the patients alternating between two doctors on duty.

At one point, he is distracted by a tiny hand reaching tentatively to tug at the loop of his belt. He looks down to find the girl with the bleeding knee, now firmly bandaged, peering up at him with huge brown eyes.

“My brother Jerry says you know Batman,” the girl announces without preamble. “Do you?”

There’s a derisive snort, coming, Bruce guesses, from the bleary-eyed man in the far corner who’s still waiting his turn. Bruce ignores him, and the piercing gaze of the old lady, to kneel in front of the girl so he can meet her at eye level. 

“I don’t think anyone actually knows Batman,” he tells her quietly, trying not to take the look of disappointment she gives him to heart. “But I’ve seen him a few times.”

“You _are_ the rich guy from the papers, right?” the girl inquires, inspecting him critically. “The one with all the cars?”

“Well,” Bruce hesitates, “I suppose.”

The girl seems unimpressed, but apparently, she decides to go ahead with her mission nonetheless. 

“Batman saved my mom,” she tells him in a whisper. “She was there the last time Riddler held up a bank. Can you tell him I said thank you?”

Touched, Bruce smiles for her, nodding. “I’ll do my best,” he promises, and is silently glad that the girl’s mother wasn’t involved in anything orchestrated by Joker. That thought jams a brand new nail of guilt into him to keep all the others company — just when he thought there wouldn’t be any room left for more. 

“Good.” She returns his smile for a fraction of a second before waving goodbye and darting off without much regard for her wounded knee, curls bouncing in a fierce tangle around her head.

Heartsore and unbalanced, Bruce gets back on his feet to find Leslie smiling warmly at him from the door to her office, holding the hand of the girl with the arm in a sling. Before he can say anything, she turns back to the girl and squeezes her hand.

“Come to me if anything happens, all right?” she tells her, and the girl nods, her expression muted as she gazes fixedly into the floor. “Lina? Do you promise?”

“Yeah, okay,” the girl murmurs.

“And tell your mom to come see me. I have something she should try for her leg.”

“Fine.”

“Now if those girls ever bother you again, you just let me know and we’ll find a way to deal with them, okay?”

Lina nods, but she doesn’t seem convinced that any attempts to deal with anyone will have any lasting effects. Her despondent expression twists Bruce’s heart as he finds himself drawn to the little drama unfolding between the two of them, before Leslie sends the girl on her way with one last kind, concerned smile, and then directs the same expression first at Bruce and then at the old lady. 

“Mrs Turpin, you can come in now,” she says. “You’re next,” she tells Bruce, eyes twinkling. “Think you can wait another few minutes?”

“You’re taking away my conversation partner so I can’t promise anything,” Bruce tells her as Mrs Turpin starts making her shaky way over to Leslie’s office, already grumbling something about her back.

“You’ll manage,” Leslie opines, and Bruce does, taking advantage of the lull to catch up on his e-mails. The conversation with Mrs Turpin has helped him keep his own anxiety about the impending meeting at bay and he’s desperate to keep distracting himself, so he keeps his attention on his phone, only looking up to check on the situation in the waiting room.

He’s the only one left by the time Leslie is ready for him — the bleary-eyed man has been admitted to the second doctor in the meantime, leaving Bruce to a silence that now feels oddly inappropriate for this place. Bruce gazes at the faded pastel pink paint and the worn chairs, and the cracks in the floor, and wonders if it’s because of the hour, and how long until the next batch of distressed East Enders gravitates over seeking help, and whether Leslie is getting any time to herself at all. As soon as the thought sparkles to life he can practically hear Alfred’s snort and a haughty _Look who’s talking_ , so he shuts it down, glancing back to his phone and typing off a quick question to Lucius about the coming month’s charity budget and how far it can be stretched.

The text exchange that follows distracts him to the point where he can almost forget the dull, quiet weight growing and growing in the pit of his stomach with every second that separates him from Leslie’s office. Soon now she’ll open the door again and invite him in, and he’s going to step inside, and look into her eyes, and…

He bites his bottom lip and closes his eyes, squeezing the phone. He thinks of Joker, warm and pliant on his lap. The taste of his kisses echoes on Bruce’s mouth even now, stirring his blood, and he holds on to the longing as he tries to clear his mind again, telling himself, _This is for both of us_.

That isn’t quite enough to silence the angry little voice insisting that he doesn’t _need_ therapy and he shouldn’t be wasting his time here, and the fact that it’s Leslie he’s about to see isn’t very soothing either, this close to the actual appointment. The prospect of talking to her about anything that’s happened during the last year or so is, quite frankly, terrifying. He has no idea where to start, and he doesn’t want to. 

But he doesn’t let himself be tempted to just cancel the appointment and split as quickly as possible. Instead he stays where he is, standing up, pressing his back to the wall and measuring the passing seconds by the agitated beat of his heart. 

When the door to Leslie’s office opens again to release a still-grumpy Mrs Turpin, Bruce has worked himself so close to the edge he nearly jumps, and now the panic goes straight for his throat, clawing hard. He tries to convince himself that this can just be a social visit and he doesn’t have to say anything he doesn’t want to say. Leslie is an old friend. He’s about to see an old friend. That’s it.

He clings to that thought for all he’s worth as he drags himself over to the office and closes the door behind him. He turns — 

Leslie sweeps him into a fierce hug, pulling him down even as she stands on tiptoe. All at once Bruce is awash with the sharp smell of antiseptic and something pleasantly herbal that floats distant memories of long, quiet afternoons in the garden or in the Manor library, a quiet voice reassuring, a hand gently stroking his hair. He surrenders into the hug, returning it with care, and breathes out into Leslie’s gray hair. 

“It’s so good to see you,” Leslie says into his shoulder, and Bruce’s stomach pinches with remorse.

“You too,” he tells her with feeling.

She releases him to gaze fondly into his eyes, then ushers him into the little room beyond the office, with the worn sofa Bruce remembers bleeding onto on a few choice occasions and a couple of equally used, comfortable-looking armchairs. Leslie invites him to make himself at home as, radiating crisp energy, she busies herself around a cabinet on top of which a serviceable coffee machine catches the last of the evening sun. 

“I don’t know about you but I need reinforcements,” Leslie mutters, shooting Bruce a warm look over her shoulder. “Coffee?”

“Please,” Bruce replies with some degree of relief. At the very least it’ll give his hands something to do as he fumbles for words he doesn’t have.

“I hear from Selina you’ve been very helpful with our big project,” Leslie tells him conversationally as the coffee machine sputters and gurgles along. “I cannot even begin to say how grateful I am. It’s such a wonderful idea.”

“It is,” Bruce agrees. “I wasn’t surprised to hear you’re involved in it.”

“What can I say? Selina’s a difficult woman to say no to.” This time when Leslie looks at him she grins. “Although you seem to be immune.”

“Hardly,” Bruce says. “I’m giving her the money, aren’t I? And anyway, I don’t think you fought all that hard.”

“I didn’t mean the project, Bruce.”

Bruce sighs. “I know. It just —” he takes a deep breath. “It just didn’t work out.”

And it was mostly his fault that it didn’t, too, but then again, he imagines Leslie suspects as much. He half-expects her to start nagging him about it, but thankfully, Leslie doesn’t, and only gives him a commiserative hum as she returns to her coffee preparations.

“It happens,” she agrees, setting down two small white cups. “Especially when you’re both so… busy.” She flashes him a smile as she carries the cups over to the small wooden table and takes up residence in one of the chairs across from Bruce. She reaches for one of the cups and takes a sip, closing her eyes for a moment.

“Mmm,” she hums, “I needed that.”

“I don’t want to take up too much of your time,” Bruce tells her quietly. “If you’re busy —”

“Nonsense,” Leslie cuts him off immediately. “Sarah’s on duty and so’s Clarence, they can handle things well enough on their own. And I always have time for you.”

Bruce glances to the side, at the armrest of the sofa he’s currently perched on. It’s mostly clean, save for a few stubborn stains that could be anything at this point, and there is nothing to suggest all the times he’s come here in the middle of the night seeking help for himself or, more frequently, for others. But he still remembers that he has, and that Leslie and her staff were always ready to help no matter the hour, and no matter the person Bruce wanted them to patch up. 

He nods, reaching for his coffee. It’s strong and bitter and hot going down.

“So.” Leslie makes herself comfortable in her chair, cradling the cup in her hands as if to warm them. “How are you?”

“Really?” Bruce gives her a hint of a smirk. “Is that how you want to begin?”

“I’m curious,” Leslie admits with an easy shrug. “You haven’t staggered in here to bleed on my furniture in quite a while and Selina is usually too busy to gossip. I must admit that Alfred’s call surprised me.”

“How much has he told you?” Bruce asks as he seeks refuge in the sharp taste of the coffee; he senses that the difficult part is just around the bend.

“Not a whole lot,” Leslie admits, face setting into something more serious. “He said it might be better if I let you explain in your own words. But he sounded very concerned. He also mentioned that the Joker is involved — said I should be ready for it. You can imagine my state of mind after that little tidbit.”

Bruce hangs his head. “Yeah. He is,” he manages.

Leslie watches him expectantly, her face warm, open and just a touch worried. It should be reassuring but instead it only makes Bruce’s hesitation worse; he isn’t quite ready to start talking about himself just yet. He needs more time. So to fill the silence before it chokes him up, he asks, “Do you know Dr. Nisha Mulligan? She’s a psychiatrist at Arkham.”

“Not personally,” Leslie tells him, eyebrows knitting tight together. “The doctors at Arkham are a very… insular crowd. There aren’t exactly a lot of opportunities for socializing when they spend most of their waking hours up there, and you won’t be surprised to know that they have a certain… reputation.” Leslie’s eyes twinkle with flecks of amusement before she readjusts her glasses. “But I do remember I was at a conference she attended and I read a few of her papers.”

“Do you think she’s… good?”

“I’d say so, yes.” Leslie takes a moment to think about it. “She struck me as very competent. Her papers had some interesting insights into the nature of criminal pathology. To be honest, I didn’t even know Arkham managed to snag her — I’d say good for them.”

Bruce lets out a breath. “So you think she can be trusted?”

“I can’t exactly vouch for someone I’ve never met,” Leslie points out, “but as much as anyone at Arkham can be trusted, I’d say, cautiously… maybe. Why?” Now the concern wins over as Leslie leans closer to peer into his eyes. “Are you considering her as your doctor?”

“No,” Bruce tells her immediately. “No, it’s not that. But…” He gazes into his coffee. “She’s the Joker’s doctor,” he explains. “I had hoped you might ease some of my doubts.”

“You don’t think she’s a good fit for him?” Leslie drinks more of her coffee before setting the cup back down on the table. “I’m sorry, Bruce, but that could be said of just about anyone.”

“I know,” Bruce agrees. “And she’s had more results with him than anyone else before. But…”

He trails off, feeling the weight of Leslie’s gaze on him.

“I’m not exactly surprised to see you’re so involved in the treatment of your more colorful enemies,” Leslie says after a moment. “But is there a particular reason you’re bringing this up now?”

“Yeah.” Bruce tightens the hold on his cup. Here goes nothing. “I’m responsible for the Joker in more ways than one. You probably heard that he’s been moved from Arkham?”

Leslie nods.

“Well.” Bruce takes a long sip, letting the coffee scald the walls of his mouth. “He’s been in my house the whole time.”

There’s a tight, fragile silence. Then Leslie suggests, “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

Bruce nods. Yeah. He thinks he can do that.

So he concentrates, struggles to find a neutral space in his mind to keep his narrative as emotionally removed as he can, and gives Leslie a shortened, heavily edited account of how he tried to approach Joker with the offer of a truce; how the horrors of the funfair unfolded and culminated with Joker agreeing to take his hand; how Bruce got involved in his therapy; how he got the idea to move Joker to the Manor and how that particular experiment has played out so far. Leslie listens attentively, crossing one leg over the other, knitting her hands together in her lap and never once interrupting, even though she nods or frowns from time to time, reassuring Bruce of her attention. This manages to see Bruce through the safer waters of pure fact and gets him as far as his discovery of the corruption at Arkham, at which point he falters, stumbling over his own words, suddenly losing ground. 

He can’t really proceed from there without telling Leslie about his feelings for Joker and their consequences, and suddenly it’s like he’s back in his own kitchen, looking into the faces of his family. Leslie has been impacted by Joker too. She’s treated more of his victims than Bruce can count. His stomach twists up in violent knots as he opens his mouth, and closes it again; as he stalls for time with the rest of his coffee, which by now has gone cold; as his face heats up with memories as much as shame. 

“Bruce,” Leslie asks after a moment, a warm, cautious question offering nothing but concern and goodwill, “are you all right?”

Bruce sighs. “No,” he whispers. 

“Is there anything I can do to make things easier for you?”

“Not really. It’s just… This next part,” Bruce hesitates. “The next part is exactly why Alfred wanted me to see you. And it’s the one that already cost me two people I…”

He closes his eyes. 

“Cost you,” Leslie echoes after a moment. “How?”

“Jason and Barbara,” Bruce tells her, tense all over. “When I told them, they…” he takes a deep breath. “They decided they no longer want to have anything to do with me.” _And they were right_.

There’s another delicate moment of silence as Leslie digests this, her mouth pursed. “But they didn’t cut ties when you brought the Joker into the Manor in the first place,” she murmurs, thinking aloud. 

“No,” Bruce agrees. “That wasn’t quite the last straw, even for Barbara.” He makes himself look up into Leslie’s eyes as he forces himself to say, “It was what I… came to realize, about myself and Joker… that finally drove them away for good.”

Leslie’s eyes go wide as color drains from her face. She holds herself stiff in the armchair as she processes his words.

She whispers, “Oh Bruce.”

Bruce hangs his head and lets the moment, with all its pregnant silence, weigh him down.

“I’m assuming it’s serious,” Leslie says finally. “Since you told the others…”

“I don’t know,” Bruce whispers. “I think — yes. Serious enough.”

“No wonder you can’t bring himself to trust his doctor after everything you’ve uncovered at Arkham.”

Bruce looks up at her, to see nothing but worry digging deep lines in her face. There’s no trace of disgust there. No revulsion. He swallows.

“Leslie,” he says, “are you serious? You don’t have any comments about anything else?”

If possible, Leslie looks even sadder as she asks, “What were you expecting me to say?”

“Not that. Not — not that.” He presses a hand to his face, into the spot that’s beginning to pulse with pain. “Jason is disgusted with me,” he says. “So is Barbara.”

“And did you expect me to be, too?”

“Aren’t you?” Bruce doesn’t even try to hide the barb in his voice at this point. “Be honest. Do you even get what I’m trying to say?”

“You’re telling me you’ve discovered you have feelings for the Joker,” Leslie translates steadily, without a falter.

And God, hearing it put into words by someone else — so calmly, so steadily, like it isn’t the most revolting thing Bruce has ever done…!

“I can’t believe you just said that with a straight face,” Bruce struggles, something dark and simmery inside him flaring in rebellion against her calm, wanting to challenge it, wanting to make her _react_. “He’s a murderer,” he insists, and the last word comes out with an emphasis he doesn’t even intend to give it. “A murderer,” he repeats, feeling cold under his collar even as a flush creeps up the back of his neck, “and I kissed him, Leslie. I wanted to kiss him. I —” He closes his eyes. His headache is getting worse by the second, and there’s something like vice clamping around his mind. “I kissed him, and I invited him to live in my house. I chose him over my family.”

The last word comes out like a wheeze, and scrapes as it leaves his mouth. His breath is coming short. He tries to gasp in air to wash down the taste of the words, but they linger, painting his tongue black and red. 

After a minute Leslie stands up and starts moving around the room — Bruce can’t bring himself to look up and see what she’s doing. His head feels cottony, light and heavy all at once, and the noises of her bustling come muted, as though filtered through multiple layers before they reach him. 

He starts counting under his breath, _One, two, three._

That only makes him think of the taste of white skin, and Jason’s and Barbara’s faces, and drags him to drown even faster, going down, down, down.

“Here,” Leslie whispers, closer to him, her voice struggling to clear. Bruce feels a dip in the couch next to him, and something cold pressing to his forehead, a slashing chill piercing the gathering fog. “It’s water. Drink some.”

She keeps pressing the startlingly cold glass to his temple before he takes it from her, and his hands tremble as he lifts it to his lips. There’s ice in the water, lots of it, and it nips fiercely at his fingers through the glass. The cold water shocks its way down into his stomach.

Bruce breathes out and blinks. He drinks more water.

“Try holding onto the glass,” Leslie advises quietly. “Press yourself into the back of the sofa as much as you can. Look for an anchor. And breathe.”

 _Breathe._ Like what he told Joker to do, the first time he let him collapse into his arms, like —

He closes his eyes again and holds onto the chill of the icy glass like to his own grappling hook. The purpose is much the same, he thinks, distantly, foggily. In both cases it’s to stop himself falling. He sits back too and tries to mold himself into the sofa’s backrest, seeking the resistance of the cushions, needing them to be much harder than they actually are. He thinks with longing of the walls in the room, but knows he should probably stay put for now, even as his face burns with shame that he’s letting Leslie see any of it. 

“Would you like me to touch you?” Leslie asks after a moment. “I don’t want to make things worse.”

Bruce doesn’t want to nod, and hates himself for the fact that he does anyway. The feeling abates somewhat when the warmth of Leslie’s hand lends itself to his shoulder, gently at first and then firming, offering strength for him to borrow just like it used to do when he was eight years old and bleeding from a whole other wound. 

This doesn’t quite feel like it did back then — not quite the twisting pain of a chest ripped wide open, of a gaping gunhole where his place in the world should have been. It’s duller, slower, rather like the difference between a gunshot and a much smaller knife wound. Thick. Sluicy. Bleeding out of him drip by drip instead of all at once.

He wonders if it had been dripping for years now without him realizing.

And then he thinks, _Oh, you realized all right. You just chose to ignore it like everything else._

He breathes out, and takes another moment to let the ache slowly settle into something more familiar. 

“Does this happen often?” Leslie asks once all the water is gone and only ice clinks in the glass. “The shortness of breath, the… pressure in your chest? The panic?”

“Not as bad,” Bruce tries. “But…” he trails off, unsure how to voice any of it, and fiercely not wanting to.

“I see,” Leslie says quietly. “Do you have trouble sleeping, too?”

Bruce just looks at her. She sighs, squeezing his shoulder.

“Obviously we’re dealing with quite severe anxiety,” she says after another pause. “Given the circumstances and the load you’ve taken upon yourself, that’s hardly surprising. We’re going to try and ease some of that first, I think, before we start on everything else. Does that sound all right?”

“Do you mean,” Bruce frowns as his mind clears back into sharp focus, “medication?” 

“Yes.” Leslie pats his shoulder before she stands up and moves to her office, only to come back again with her prescription notebook. 

“No,” Bruce tells her. “I can’t take medication.”

She stops short, raising an eyebrow at him. “And why on Earth not?”

“You know why,” Bruce shoots back. “I’m — you know what I am. I need my mind clear for work.”

“Exactly,” Leslie counters, “and this is going to help you with it.”

“But the side effects —”

“We’ll start with small doses. I’ll add sleeping drugs too, to help you get back to a regular schedule. This should make a big difference on its own, but for impending anxiety attacks, take half a Xanax pill when you start feeling symptoms. It shouldn’t slow you down much, if at all, and it will help stop the anxiety from overpowering you.”

She starts scribbling in the notebook, then tears out the page with practiced efficiency and presents it to Bruce.

He eyes it, gripping the glass tight.

“Bruce,” Leslie implores softly. “This is for your own good. You can’t keep expecting to shoulder everything all on your own, and this situation is clearly overwhelming you. You need the help.”

“I don’t,” Bruce insists over a dark, swirly prickle rising up his chest. “I can handle this. I just need to — to think about it, to move past it, start planning, to figure out what to do —”

“Then why are you here in the first place?” 

“Because I promised Joker,” he confesses quietly. “I promised him I’d find a therapist, and then Alfred —”

“There we go, then.” Leslie’s eyes shine with triumph. “You’ve found one. And I’m going to do everything in my power to offer you what assistance I can. This is how we start,” she waves the paper at him, “and besides that, I want you to meet me once a week.”

Bruce sighs and slumps against the sofa. “Once a month,” he argues. He knows there is no dodging that one, not after his display, but he can still negotiate.

Leslie sighs but agrees, “All right, once a month. But I won’t accept any excuses. And the meds —”

“I’m not taking the meds.”

“Is the Joker taking meds?”

“Well, yes,” Bruce bristles. “But —”

“Do you think you’re better than him?”

“Leslie,” Bruce says slowly, narrowing his eyes. “He is a psychopathic murderer.”

“So you do.” Leslie’s voice is hard, challenging. “You have feelings for him and you say you’ve invited him to move in, but you think you’re above the kind of treatment he is receiving.”

“That is not fair. You’re trying to manipulate me. He’s sick — he actually needs the treatment. And I —”

“You do too.” Leslie takes a step closer, still holding out the prescription. “You just had a panic attack on my couch,” she says, letting her voice soften just a touch. “You’re going through a tremendously difficult time that’s obviously creating a conflict inside you that you are not equipped to deal with. You’re still processing an _impossible_ situation that stands directly against what you previously believed about yourself, and you’ve lost some of your support network which must have been a horrible blow. You’re probably going through deep depression and self-questioning, if not self-hate. And that’s just what’s happening _right now_.”

Bruce can’t meet her eyes right now. He can’t see her face. Anger bubbles in his throat to crowd against his teeth, a hot, tight pressure. “Leslie —”

“That doesn’t mean you’re weak,” Leslie insists, coming to crouch in front of him. “Bruce, do you understand? It doesn’t. I’m not saying that. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with you, that your anxiety is on the same level as the Joker’s problems, that you’re — broken. Taking medication doesn’t mean any of it. Admitting that you need help doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It just means you’re human.”

_There’s nothing wrong with needing help. It’s okay to say they hurt you._

Bruce shuts his mind against the memory of his own voice, but it does nothing to stop the flashing image of Joker’s face — tight, cold, contorted with rage — from slipping in under the cracks. 

God. He’d always known they were more alike than he’d like to believe, but this is not how he’d ever wanted to see those similarities reinforced. 

“Listen,” Leslie tries again, gently. “I know you’re stubborn. You’re stubborn enough that apparently you’ve pushed the Joker himself into accepting help. If he can do it, so can you. Do you think any less of him because he’s receiving treatment? Do you think he’s a weaker man than he used to be because of that?”

Bruce breathes out, mind whirring. “No,” he allows. The opposite, actually. He can’t even imagine what it must be taking out of Joker to stay in those rooms day after day, being watched, being fed, being… treated. Allowing people to think he needs it. Accepting, before himself, that maybe he really might. 

Bruce can’t help but admire that, and the reminder goes some way to allow a degree of warmth back into his heart. 

“Then why do you think that of yourself?” Leslie asks.

And now Bruce almost snorts, because there is nothing he can possibly say to that.

Leslie seems to read the desperation in his face because she sighs again, looking, possibly, as tired as Bruce feels. She says, “If his ridiculous pride can take it — which, I’m assuming, is for your sake, because frankly I can’t conceive of any other reason he might have agreed to the whole thing — well, if he can do it for you, you can do it for him. Think of it this way: you’re fulfilling a promise. You’re sacrificing your pride for him just like he is doing for you. Is this the kind of reciprocity you’re ready for?”

“This is not about pride, Leslie,” Bruce protests, the hot prickle back at his throat with a vengeance and sticking to his palate. “It’s about being Batman. I already don’t know if I can keep working if I’m — if I’m the kind of person who can kiss the Joker. If I have more openings for people to exploit, if I’m _weak_ —”

“You’re not.”

“But the meds, if I take them, then that means —” 

“Bruce Wayne, will you take the damn prescription.” The steel in Leslie’s voice takes him by surprise, pulling his eyes wide. “For me,” she insists, “for Alfred, for the Joker if you have to, but take it, and take the pills to feel better when you need it. They won’t make you weaker. They’ll help you cope. This is what you need to be effective, isn’t it? You know this. You’re just too goddamn stubborn to admit it.”

And Bruce wants to argue more. He wants to keep protesting, _No, no, you don’t understand._ Leslie really doesn’t, and neither does Alfred, nor Dick, nor anyone — they don’t understand that he needs to be strong to keep them all safe, night after night after night. But then…

He looks at the prescription. And remembers the weight of a warm pill on his tongue, and the brush of Joker’s fingers putting it there.

He remembers about clarity, and about balance.

He lets himself think about Leslie’s words.

_Is this the kind of reciprocity you’re ready for?_

Good fucking question, and he wonders what it means that he isn’t ready to commit to an answer.

It’s the challenge in that last thought that finally makes him look up again, and reach out to — very slowly — take the prescription from Leslie’s hand. 

She breathes out as he does, and pulls herself up to once again sit beside him on the couch. For a while they sit in silence, each of them simmering in the moment as — now popped — it slowly bleeds its own weight away. 

“Well,” Leslie says at length, “I think I’ve tormented you enough for one evening. We should call it a day.”

“Right,” Bruce manages curtly, and gets to his feet.

“First Friday of next month,” Leslie decides, “same hour. I’ll do my best to clear the line for you next time.”

Bruce looks at her, clutching the prescription. 

“No excuses?” he says.

“Nope.” Leslie makes an effort to give him a grin, just a little worn, spread just a little thin. “I won’t be letting you off the hook. I’ll sic Selina on you if I have to.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Watch me.” The grin grows stronger, easing away some of the prickle from Bruce’s mouth. “And in the meantime, I think I’ll make a few phone calls to see if I can get that doctor Mulligan out for coffee.”

“Thank you,” Bruce tells her earnestly, reading right through the veiled implication. He glances at the bit of paper in his hand. He swallows. “For everything.”

“Oh, come here,” Leslie says, standing up and opening her arms for him.

He surrenders to another hug, gentler this time, much shorter — and wants to believe it helped soothe more of the barbed protests and tension from his muscles. It doesn’t, not really, he is still far too bristly and raw for that, the dark thick swirl in his stomach far too strong. 

But at least he can breathe normally now. That has to count for something. 

Even so, the weight still sits hot and tight in his stomach as he walks out of the clinic, itching, buzzing, restless with dark energy. Most of it seems to be concentrating in the hand still clutching Leslie’s prescription.

He considers it a success that he doesn’t tear it into pieces as soon as he shuts himself in the car. 

 

***

 

Some time later, he is sitting in the cave, in the comfort of his own chair among the soft chirping of the bats and the hum of machinery, examining the little plastic container and wondering if he’ll ever be able to look at it without a spike of resounding _NO_.

“It’s a good step, Master Bruce,” Alfred reassures him as he catches him at it. “I’m very proud of you.”

Bruce chooses not to comment on that. There’s still too much prickliness inside him, too much protest, too much hot tension concentrated on too small a surface, and it’s still too early for him to be able to release it out into the night. He glances at the screens.

It’s probably a bad idea, but…

He gets to his feet, suddenly gripped with a need so strong he knows it’s useless to resist.

“And where might you be going?” Alfred wonders. “It’s still early for your nightly romps. The sun is hardly down.”

“I’m not going out,” Bruce tells Alfred, moving over to where his suits are stored and selecting one of the older ones, with only a layer of padding and an undersuit instead of full armor. “I’m going to Joker.”

Alfred considers him as Bruce gets dressed. He ventures, “Right now? In that costume?”

“Yes.” Bruce fits the cowl over his head, lifted somewhat by the old, familiar fit.

“Forgive me, Master Bruce, but why ever for?”

“I promised him sparring sessions,” Bruce tells him, emptying the utility belt. “I don’t see why we can’t have one right now.”

“Actually, there are enough reasons why you shouldn’t that if you just sit down and let me list all of them I’m sure that will be enough for you to cool your head,” Alfred parries. “ _Sir_.”

And yeah, he’s probably right. 

Bruce turns to walk up the stairs anyway.

“I’ll keep the cameras on,” he says as he does. 

“Was that supposed to reassure me?”

“I need this, Alfred.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Alfred comments. “And this is precisely why it’s such a terrible idea.”

“Tell him to prepare,” Bruce says, ignoring him. “I’ll be with him in five minutes.”

If Alfred has any more objections, Bruce is too far gone to hear them. As he stalks up the stairs the electric buzzing coasts on his blood, restless, itchy, wanting out out _out_. It brings images on its current, flashing one by one: Jason slamming the door on him. Barbara in the wheelchair, turning away. Dick’s gentle reassurances about needing space, the pain and worry in Alfred’s eyes. The little plastic container of pills, Leslie’s words about weakness and his own humiliation. 

They keep coming, over and over and over, piling one on top of the other until he’s filled with them. Until he’s overflowing. The dark sluicy thickness in his stomach keeps thickening, trickling into his blood, into his bones, bringing out the sharp edges in his mind, whispering about blame and anger and tempting with the promise to take it out on the one responsible.

He stands before Joker’s door and balls his hands into fists. He looks into the camera.

“I’m going to need you to leave,” he tells the guards. 

“We don’t know anything about extra alone time,” a female voice parries.

Bruce sets his jaw. “I haven’t discussed it with the Commissioner or the doctor yet. But I need you to leave. You don’t want to be implicated.”

“If you’re going to hurt him —” the woman starts, but something interrupts her. There’s silence.

And then Bruce hears footsteps on the stairs, two pairs of feet reluctantly making their way down. The guards emerge, Winston and Ramirez, and Ramirez is shooting him apprehensive looks even as Winston guides her by her shoulder.

“Come on,” he’s telling her urgently, “this is way above our paygrade. Let the Bat do what he needs to do. We’ll get some coffee and a snack, right, Bats?” He turns to Bruce. “Don’t rough him up too much, ‘kay? I don’t want to have to explain myself to Jimbo.”

Ramirez still doesn’t look convinced but she lets Winston guide her along, even as she shoots Bruce glances over her shoulder. She seems way too young to be here, but right now, Bruce can’t help but see it as an advantage. He can’t imagine someone like Lakeisha allowing him to get his way again this easily. 

He turns back to the door and punches in the security code.

“Joker?” he calls, stepping in. 

“Yoo hoo!” comes a call from the gym. “In here!”

Bruce follows the sound of the voice to find that Joker has had the time to put on a pair of sweatpants and one of his light tank tops, and has been busy pushing the gym equipment to the sides of the room to clear a space for them on the mats padding the floor. He turns to Bruce and whistles, grinning at the sight of the suit.

“Well well well, cut me wide open and stuff me full of candy,” he exclaims with glittering eyes. “You look stunning, baby! I haven’t seen you wear that little old thing in years! Is this for me? Because if it is I gotta say I really appreciate it. Not that the new suit is bad, but I have such an appreciation for the way this one accentuates your posterior.”

“Glad to see you’re in a good mood,” Bruce tells him. 

“So much better now that you’re here.” Joker winks. “So, are we fighting? Please say we are. I’ve been working out and everything!”

“If you don’t want to, now is the time to tell me,” Bruce informs him. 

“Ooooh, I like where this is going.” Joker stands away from the spin bike with a sharp gleam in his eyes. “It’s your dark voice. Something’s ticked you off, hasn’t it? What’s the matter, darling, did Robin leave the toilet seat up again?”

There is no way he knows, Bruce tells himself. The fact that he brought up Robin is a complete accident. He can’t know.

Still, Bruce holds himself rigid when he tells Joker, “Robin is gone.”

“Is he now?” Joker is moving towards him, slow, deliberate steps. His grin is sharpening into a razor’s edge. “Tell me,” he teases, “could this be because of _moi_?”

Bruce holds his gaze as Joker comes to a stop in front of him. He whispers, “You know it is.”

“So you told them.”

“I did.”

“How interesting. I wondered if you would.” Joker traces the bat on Bruce’s chest with the tip of his fingernail. “It hurts, doesn’t it? Disappointing your kid like that. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that conversation! I’m sorry, kiddo, daddy decided he likes making out with clowns —”

Bruce makes himself take a fortifying breath. “Stop.”

Something dangerous flashes in Joker’s eyes as he challenges, “Ah, but do you really want me to? You’re angry. You’re all crackly-staticy with it. And you come in here, oh so thoughtfully wearing the kind of suit that doesn’t give you too much of an advantage, itching for a fight.” He gets closer, in Bruce’s personal space. His breath lingers over Bruce’s face like his finger does over his chest. “Well,” he whispers, “I’m giving you one.”

“Last chance,” Bruce warns him. “Tell me now if you don’t want this.”

“Our safeword is lilac,” Joker purrs into Bruce’s air.

And slaps him across the face.

Bruce doesn’t stagger back — he’s locked his legs since the moment Joker drew near — but the blow still rattles his head, throwing it back, and Joker pushes his advantage with a kick to Bruce’s groin. Bruce refuses to give him any more openings and pushes back, throwing a punch which Joker dodges by jumping out of the way, leading Bruce further into the room. 

“Come on,” he entices, “give it to me.”

His eyes are blazing. His mouth is fixed into a grin Bruce remembers from lightning-lit rooftops. Bruce’s blood boils in response, catching on the electricity. The sluicy thing darkens, shooting off to twine over his limbs, and he lets it lead him after Joker, falling easily into step.

Immediately it becomes clear that Joker is not going to pull his punches — when he comes for Bruce it’s with everything he has, vicious, tooth and nail and knee and elbow and everything in-between. And that’s good. That’s exactly what Bruce needs. He doesn’t let himself go entirely but there’s an invitation in Joker’s eyes to hurt him right back and Bruce doesn’t hesitate to latch onto it as he delivers kicks and punches of his own. Joker leaps and twirls around the gym and he follows, letting Joker set the pace of this particular dance until he tastes copper in his mouth; until the pain, both his and Joker’s, bullies the tension away; until he can untangle the threads that have lead him here to isolate the anger underneath it all, and pull on it, pull and pull and pull.

“You blame me, don’t you,” Joker pants, raking his nails over the skin of Bruce’s chin, yanking his cowl down, twisting his hands in the fabric of the suit to pull him into the stationary bike. Bruce crashes against it into a heap and Joker kicks his back, laughing. “You think it’s my fault you lost your little bird boy!”

Bruce staggers up and lunges at him, catching him around the middle, throwing him onto the mats. He punches Joker’s face. Blood sprays from the white nose to taint Bruce’s hands and Joker laughs harder.

“Oh, that’s it,” he goads, bucking under Bruce, “more! Harder! Make me feel the next one!”

His hands seek to grab around Bruce’s crotch. Bruce knees them away, trying to pin Joker down, but Joker punches him with a hand twisted and aimed so that Bruce’s face collides with the solid metal of the shock bracelet, and he twists until he rolls out from under Bruce only to latch onto his back and lock himself in, pushing Bruce’s head face-down into the mats for all he’s worth.

“Poor Batsy,” he taunts, grabbing him by the cowl’s ear to pull his head back up. “Well let me tell you something,sweet thing.” He slams Bruce’s head back into the mat. “Love _hurts_.”

Bruce growls and grabs his hands, then throws him backwards across the room over his own body.

He doesn’t know if he does blame Joker. Maybe. No more than he blames himself. But he knows that he _is_ furious with him: for worming under Bruce’s skin, for messing with his head, for doing such horrible things that all of this has to be so difficult in the first place. It’s easy to hold onto that anger when Joker himself invites it, when he wants to be the target for it, and when he absorbs it all into himself like a sponge with no maximum capacity, just taking and taking and taking even as he offers Bruce pain in return. 

Give and take. Back and forth. One-two-three.

So Bruce doesn’t have any room left for remorse when Joker gets up again and he slams him into a wall. Doesn’t feel bad when he grabs a fistful of green hair and pulls until Joker moans with it. Doesn’t hold back when his fist collides with the hard bone of Joker’s jaw.

His blood sings, and he’s more alive than he has been in months. 

_No one dances with you like I do,_ indeed.

The fact that he still wants to kiss that mouth, even bloodied from Bruce’s punches, as much as he wants to add to the pain, only makes it all the more intense. More frustrating and rewarding at the same time. He lets his hands linger as he pins and holds and pulls close, and Joker is doing the same, both of them groping between punches, panting into each other’s mouths.

And then Joker changes the game by once again jamming his bracelet into Bruce’s mouth, then using the distraction to violently pull off Bruce’s glove. Before Bruce catches onto what’s happening Joker is dragging the sharp spines on it over Bruce’s chest, tearing the fabric of the suit — cutting the bat right in half — and the undersuit, right to the flesh underneath. 

The pain flares sharp and hot; Bruce has to pull away to clutch at it with his now-bare hand, blood beginning to drip in-between his fingers. Joker laughs, following him, using his advantage to rend the skin of Bruce’s cheek the very same way. Bruce pushes him away before the point of the spine can reach his mouth. He kicks Joker’s stomach, and pushes back until Joker sprawls on the mats, the glove skidding away. He lands on top of Joker, hard, and Joker reaches to claw at his shoulders, pulling him down until the tips of their noses touch. 

His hips jerk against Bruce’s thigh. Once, twice, again and again. He gasps, “Please,” his hands moving to clutch at the torn bat symbol.

Bruce growls and backhands him across the face so hard Joker’s blood sprays the mat. And again. And again. Joker’s grip on him tightens; he goes stiff all over, and cries out, grinding into Bruce; he closes his eyes and slumps, and coughs, and is still.

Bruce watches him, panting. He stays where he is, on top of the now-spent body. He watches the blood from his chest slip past the shreds of the bat symbol to drip down onto Joker’s white tank top. Watches where his now naked hand has left a red smear on the cotton. Feels the fierce sting in his cheek.

After a moment Joker struggles to turn his head and look at him. He smiles over the blood painting his mouth a deep red. He moves one hand, gently now, to collect a few bloody drops from Bruce’s cheek, then moves to the other, unmarked one one and sketches a heart there.

He mouths, _I love you._

That’s when Bruce finally grunts and rolls off him, and sits up. 

It’s the only thing that stops him from kissing the words right back into Joker’s mouth.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we have it, folks - another supersized chapter that FINALLY brings us to a place I initially thought we'd reach much, _much_ sooner. Please excuse any typos and any lingering messiness - this is a lot of stuff to get through and edit and to be frank I've had three glasses of wine to get me through editing. I'll probably keep coming back to tinker with it when I'm able to see words again.
> 
> There's some discussion of sexuality in this chapter, and I reveal some of my own headcanons regarding that and I'm SUPER curious to see what you think of them.
> 
> Thank you so much for all your support until this point - I don't know if I'd be able to get this far without you guys, seriously. I love you all.
> 
> Extra thanks and hugs to everyone who helped me brainstorm and hammer this chapter together - you're all superstars and I'm so grateful. 
> 
> Please enjoy and as usual, let me know what you think.

Bruce’s initial plan is to slink off to his own bedroom and the secret first aid kit he’s got stashed in the bathroom under the tiles by the sink. The cuts Joker left him to remember him by aren’t particularly deep — hardly even bleeding anymore — and Bruce is more than capable of patching himself up on his own before changing suits and venturing out into the night. There’s no need to bother Alfred. No need to worry him, and to trigger a barrage of thin-mouthed commentary about —

Alfred is waiting for him by the door to his bedroom, arms crossed and expression cold.

Shit.

“In,” Alfred orders, stepping aside to let Bruce through. His tone lingers somewhere half a degree above permafrost. “Sit on the bed.”

He all but pushes Bruce to do as he’s told and then disappears into the bathroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Bruce watches with a sinking heart as Alfred reemerges holding the first aid kit Bruce’d been so sure he’d kept well-hidden. 

“How did you —”

“I know everything,” Alfred tells him. “Now hold still.”

Sighing, Bruce surrenders without further protest. He knows a lost fight when he sees one. He tugs off the cowl first, then the upper parts of the torn suit and undersuit so that the cuts sting in the chilled air. Alfred says nothing when he none too gently cleans the blood off Bruce’s face and chest and then dabs disinfectant along both cuts, the usual sting flaring up to follow. Bruce grits his teeth against it and, backed by years of practice, doesn’t let a single sound slip past; by now, this is all routine. 

What isn’t routine is Alfred’s stormy silence, and the sharp, jerky twist to his hands as they tear strips of cotton and gauze to apply to the cuts. Neither is the way he avoids looking directly into Bruce’s eyes, even as he applies the dressing to the cut on Bruce’s face. 

But he doesn’t need to meet Bruce’s eyes for Bruce to read the cold fury in his. Bruce doesn’t remember the last time he’d seen Alfred quite this angry. 

The coward in him lets the silence thicken as Alfred turns to treat his bruises with the time-tested herbal liniment and salve, rubbing both into Bruce’s body with the steady, mechanical expertise of someone who’s been forced to do the exact same thing nearly every night for well over a decade. It should be soothing, and is, sometimes, but not today. Today Bruce is acutely aware of every little movement, and Alfred’s tight, contained fury lingers where his hands do, sticking to his skin under the salve, and it’s all Bruce can do to stop himself from squirming or outward yelling “What?!” like a sullen teenager.

He knows full well “what,” which only makes the whole thing worse.

Alfred only meets his eyes when he’s done. Then he asks, coldly, “And what of your _paramour_? Does he require medical assistance too?”

It’s the bite in his voice that helps Bruce keep his eyes on Alfred, igniting the first sparks of spite. “I don’t think so,” he says, his own tone hard. “No bones broken, no cuts.”

“How reassuring.”

“Alfred…”

“I shall send him the liniment and the salve then, and some ice. I trust he’ll know what to do with them. This is, after all, your bread and butter.”

“Alfred.”

“Am I to expect this to be a regular thing? You storming off to unleash your frustrations on the man you claim to love?”

Bruce presses hands to his face. They snag on the cut Joker left him, bandaged now but still stinging like the devil. 

“Because if it is then I’d rather know in advance,” Alfred presses, “so I may vacate the premises when the urge strikes you. I do not wish to bear witness to this kind of… roughhousing… ever again.”

Bruce breathes out through his mouth, deeply. He rubs punishing circles into the skin of his temples. “Honestly,” he whispers. “Don’t you think I feel bad enough already?”

“I don’t know,” Alfred counters, “do you?”

“I…” Bruce sighs, and hesitates. On some level, yeah. Sure. He feels terrible about the whole thing, and has pretty much since the door to Joker’s rooms closed on him, trapping inside all the ugliness that drove him there in the first place. He knows it was wrong, now, with the benefit of distance and release, the earlier red-hot urges now smoked out into a memory etched in shame. Now that the rational part of his brain seems to have remembered it exists, it’s clear to Bruce that he shouldn’t have done any of it, the uncomfortable truth of it churning heavy and unwieldy in his gut like a badly digested meal angling for a way back out. 

On the other hand…

“You don’t get it, Alfred,” he insists. “I don’t like it, but it’s… it’s just how we are.”

“How you used to be, perhaps,” Alfred corrects without mercy. “But I thought the point of having him here was that you wouldn’t have to be, anymore.”

“It’s not that easy,” Bruce whispers. 

Alfred is silent for a moment. Then he says, “This. This is precisely why I’m worried. Bruce, it should not be _difficult_ to decide you don’t want to hurt the person you love.”

Bruce chokes a little on the next words, but somehow they find their way out anyway: “But what if that person wants to be hurt?”

“That wasn’t quite what I saw,” Alfred counters. 

“You… watched.”

“I did.”

“Then you know he asked me for it. He had no objections. He _started_ —”

“Master Bruce, I’ll be blunt: what happened in that room was outrageous,” Alfred insists. “And not just because this is, as you put it, ‘how you are.’ I do realize that your relationship is… unusual, and that the Joker has an attitude to pain that is somewhat alien to me. But I hope you realize that what happened in there goes beyond even his disturbing masochism. From what I saw, he didn’t just want the pain. He performed it for you and made you believe he did to give you permission to abuse him.”

And instantly Bruce opens his mouth to protest, except nothing comes out. He works his throat under Alfred’s hard, unrelenting eyes, mind gears grinding furiously as he tries to find a place to begin, because _no_. 

No. No, that’s not what that was. He saw Joker’s eyes, he saw the desperation there, the rage, the frustration, the need to let it out as dark and brimming as Bruce’s, he saw…

He saw — 

And that’s when Bruce finally dares to take a closer look at the still-simmering memories. He remembers the look in Joker’s eyes and makes himself examine it anew as what he _thought_ he saw flakes off to reveal the truth he willfully painted over; takes the time to disseminate the way Joker acted as though someone flicked a switch in him the moment he got a read on Bruce, the drop-of-a-hat jump from flirty playfulness to the kind of biting, confrontational aggression he hadn’t displayed since he came here. Remembers that Joker _told_ him, he said, _I’m giving you one_ , giving Bruce a fight, he said Bruce had been _itching with it_ , and he baited Bruce, and then he lay there and let Bruce hit him time and time again, and he smiled, and he told Bruce he loved him, and — 

Oh God. 

Oh God, no.

He stares the realization in the face as the full extent of it finally settles in, and nearly forgets all about Alfred’s presence by his side. 

_I love you._

The heart of blood on Bruce’s cheek. The smile. The surrender at the end. 

The torn bat symbol on Bruce’s chest.

He exhales and hides his face in his hands again, and sits there on the edge of the bed in silence, feeling dirty. Feeling stupid. 

Feeling vile.

Which, in a way, is so familiar it terrifies him, because it seems like at a blink they’re right back where they started, and one thing becomes clear: Dick was right all those months ago when he first came to see Joker trapped in the house. In the ways that count, they’ve never stopped playing the game. It’s just the rules that have changed, over and over and over again, and Bruce may have switched the board, may have tried to redraw the battle lines, but when it really comes down to it the battle lines are _still there_. Even now, even with this new tender truce between them, Bruce’s first instinct is still that of one-upmanship, of challenge and conflict, and his default language regarding Joker is that of war. And what makes it harder to shake is that in a way, Joker is still trying to get under his skin, to bring out the monster inside him, exactly like he used to — it’s just that now he’s doing it for different reasons.

Because he thinks Bruce needs to let the monster out — on him. Because he thought he’d offer himself up in sacrifice to Bruce’s anger. Because he thought it was okay, and because he was doing it — 

Out of love.

The thought makes Bruce sick, and he’s too afraid to open his mouth even to ask for water.

Jesus Christ. 

That’s not the whole story, he knows — he’s pretty damn certain Joker still would have wanted the fight even if he hadn’t smelled the anger on Bruce, and it would have probably been brutal anyway because he can’t imagine how any fight between them wouldn’t be. He knows for a fact that Joker has a whole collection of bones to pick with him, and that he appreciated the chance to land some of his own punches. And that’s not even taking into account everything Dr. Mulligan told Bruce — and everything Bruce had already suspected — about Joker being a masochist, and that the whole confrontation had a decidedly… unwholesome undercurrent Bruce knows better by now than to deny, and well, Joker probably needed it on more levels than even Bruce did. 

Bruce also knows that none of it makes it right, and that he must stop using Joker’s needs — as he understands them, anyway — as a shield for his own failed judgment. 

“You need to stop enabling one another like that,” Alfred says, quietly, voice cutting into the swirl of black self-doubt that’s began to crystallize around Bruce’s heart. “You can’t let him facilitate his own abuse, no matter how much you think he may want it. If this arrangement of yours is to have any future at all one of you has to be better than that.”

And that’s another problem, right there. Smack in the middle. Bruce hangs his head as he considers the enormity of it, and whispers, “I don’t know if we can. It’s going to be… difficult.”

“I should think so. It’ll require work. The question is, do you even want to put in the effort, Master Bruce? Or are you too comfortable with things as they are?”

“Joker and I, we have… a language,” Bruce tries to explain. “I don’t know if we can learn another one at this point. I don’t know if he’d want to.”

“The language of violence.”

“Among other things,” Bruce agrees, “yes.”

“Do _you_ want a different language, Master Bruce?”

Bruce just looks at him.

It goes on for a bit before Alfred sighs and says, “Put a shirt on. We’re going down to the library.”

Bruce looks out the window, into the tempting lure of night. “I should go —”

“No.” Alfred’s tone leaves no room for argument. “I am not going to let you go out there so you can get yourself cut open some more. I’m sure Gotham will be fine if you take the night off.”

And again, Bruce’s first impulse is to protest, but one look at the quiet warning in Alfred’s face freezes the words on his tongue right before they can tumble out. Instead, he brings himself to nod, takes a brief moment to change into a clean set of pajamas and a bathrobe, then quietly follows Alfred down to the library without any more protests. The “Alfred” slot in his heart still feels much too tender and uncertain after all the revelations of the past few weeks and he doesn’t want to put any more strain on their relationship than he already has…

… And besides, he doesn’t feel he’d be very effective as Batman tonight anyway. Not with the air all but kicked out of him, first by Joker and now by his own inconvenient mind. 

He can only hope that Alfred will recognize his docile attitude for the peace offering it is.

Alfred leads him to the library and then abandons him by the doors, explaining that he’ll stop by the dumbwaiter first to send the ice and gauze and salves up to Joker’s rooms. The barb in his words hits the mark well and true, and as Bruce drags himself into the soft, warm lamplight of the library, he feels it bleed just like his chest and face did not half an hour ago. 

Still, perhaps Alfred did accept his olive branch after all — the first thing he does when he reaches the library again is pour Bruce a generous glass of sherry. He pours one for himself as well, and when Bruce gives him a questioning look, Alfred shrugs and says, “You’re going to need it.”

So Bruce plays along and stays seated on the ancient worn sofa which dominates the center of the room. As Alfred busies himself with one of the cabinets, Bruce’s eyes snag on the luxurious green leather upholstery. 

The color, even dark as it is, suddenly reminds him of Joker’s hair. That’s enough for the distracted part of his mind to start wondering how Joker would react to seeing it, and before he can stop himself, one image leads to another and all at once he is imagining Joker spread over it, all long pale limbs and an inviting smile stretched in clashing red. The picture is so vivid that Bruce almost misses it when Alfred makes his way over and takes a seat next to him, jolting him out of the fantasy. 

He carries a book with him, which he deposits on his lap. The moment Bruce’s eyes catch on it, two things happen: one, the distracting fantasy of Joker on the couch scatters in a blink like a puff of air blown to nothing by the wind. Which is good. Bruce has a feeling he’s going to need all of his faculties about him for what’s coming.

And that’s because, two, suddenly his throat is full of dust and grit and the taste of lead, and his stomach lurches in the all-too-familiar throbs of old, old pain.

“Alfred,” Bruce forces out, roughly, “what —”

Alfred keeps leafing through the bulky Wayne family album, old photographs of young smiling faces flashing at Bruce like sketches about to be animated to life. He says, “I know this is difficult, Master Bruce. There is a point to it, I promise. Let me just find… Ah. There.” He finally seems to have arrived at the picture he was looking for, and angles the tome towards Bruce so he can see.

Not that Bruce needs to. He’s memorized every single one of his parents’ pictures that he owns down to the tiniest, photographic detail. If challenged, he could recite, with his eyes closed, the exact angle in which the sun streamed into the room that particular afternoon, the titles on the book spines behind his father’s chair, the way his mother’s dress folded and creased on the wind as she stood by the open window, laughing so hard her eyes crinkled. 

He doesn’t remember this particular moment personally. He was much too young. A child of two-and-a-half, he sat there safely tucked in his father’s lap, distracted by a black teddy bear that sat on his own lap much like he himself sat on dad’s. In the photograph he’s frowning intensely into the teddy bear’s face, as though trying to listen to what it had to say, while his parents look into the camera and laugh — probably at him.

Bruce’s gaze studiously avoids that part of the photograph — he doesn’t like watching himself as a baby. It usually only reminds him how much time he’s wasted being around his parents and yet not appreciating them like he should, not even being aware of them and how important they were, and it always, always makes him angry. At himself, and all at the time he’s wasted.

He tries to bottle up the irrationality of that instinct now as he looks to Alfred and asks, “Well? I’m looking at it.”

“And what do you see?”

Bruce’s throat is trying to close up. “My parents,” he manages through it. “I don’t get what that has to do with —” 

“Yes, your parents,” Alfred says quietly, “being happy. And very much in love.”

Bruce’s eyes pull down to look into the faces forever cast in stillness, caught in a warm, bright, sunlit moment that, if it could, would smell of flowers. His eyes sting as he murmurs, “Yeah.”

“Even in a photograph,” Alfred whispers, “you can still feel it. The love that they had for each other, and for you.”

Bruce nods. That’s all he can bring himself to do.

“Tell me…” Alfred is quiet for a moment; then, he reaches for his sherry and downs an impressive sip. He clears his throat and looks at Bruce. “Tell me,” he tries again. “Can you imagine either of them ever raising their hand against the other?”

Bruce closes his eyes. 

“Alfred,” he pleads, “this is not fair.”

“They didn’t,” Alfred persists, and though his voice is quiet, there’s also steel underneath the softness that means he’ll say his piece no matter what. “Never. They argued, yes, even fought, but they never struck one another. They would be horrified at the mere idea.”

“This isn’t helping.”

“I’m well aware that I wasn’t able to model for you what a healthy relationship might look like,” Alfred tells him, with a touch of regret in his voice. “I’ve made… many mistakes in your early years, for which I apologize. We were both new to this, and in my doubt and incompetence, I have allowed you to isolate yourself far too much. But Bruce, I cannot stand by now and watch as the two of you continue your destructive behavior without saying _anything_. You claim you love this man. And yet…”

Bruce sits back, sinking into the creaky leather. His gaze strays towards the window, tempted away by the need to look at anything but Alfred’s face or the photograph.

“There’s more than one way to love someone,” he manages. “You just don’t…” he sighs, running a hand over one tired eye. He’d sell the entire house in a blink if it allowed him to be anywhere else right now. “I can’t explain it,” he tries. “We’re not like mom and dad used to be. We never will.”

“I know. I don’t expect that,” Alfred says. “Still, you _could_ consider that maybe what you see in the photograph could be… a goal? Something to work towards?”

“A goal that’s impossible.”

“Tell me, my boy, when has that ever stopped you?”

Bruce risks a look at Alfred’s face. He repeats, “That is so unfair.”

“Maybe, but perhaps necessary. Even if you don’t agree, I felt I had to at least try. I hope you’ll it give some thought,” Alfred says, as though he doesn’t know perfectly well that Bruce won’t be able to get it out of his head now if he tries. 

And now he just has to ask. It’s a futile thing to consider, a dead end, and he doesn’t want to hear the answer any more than he wants to stand in Crime Alley right now listening for gunshots. But he has to. 

“You think,” Bruce starts, and then has to take a moment to find the strength to say the words that are trying to sink right back down his throat. “You think that if they were here now, they wouldn’t approve. Don’t you?”

Alfred sighs, and once again Bruce is struck by the sight of the age lines creasing his face, driving home just how old he is in a way that Bruce doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to. 

“That’s not quite what I meant,” Alfred says softly, “and I think that it’s pointless to deliberate on that now. If they were here, you and the Joker would both be very different men, and we wouldn’t find ourselves in this situation to begin with.”

Bruce nods. There is no point denying that at this stage, and he accepts the truth, both about himself and about his own influence over Joker’s becoming who — what — he is today. He decides to take Alfred’s advice on this and not torture himself about this particular point, at least not as far as he can help it, which he realizes won’t be much. 

That thought, however, brings on its tail something else, something he has never considered before and that has, up until now, paled in relation to the enormity of his feelings for everything that Joker is. The person himself has occupied Bruce so much that he never paused to contemplate anything else, and now the realization drops on him out of nowhere, and it feels so out of place, so _jarring_ in its mundane commonplaceness when applied to Joker and himself, that when he turns to look at Alfred again his eyes get almost painfully wide. 

He asks, “But what would they say about me loving another man? Do you think they would disapprove of _that_?”

At that, Alfred smiles. The reaction feels so incongruent with the tone of the entire conversation that Bruce can only keep staring, his pulse going haywire, his insides going cold.

“Hardly,” Alfred assures him, eyes twinkling. And then he says, “If they’d had a problem with men who love other men, they wouldn’t have hired me.”

At first, Bruce doesn’t quite understand. He hears the words just fine but the meaning behind them takes its time leaking into a coherent shape. The silence thickens. In its cloying heat, the ancient ticking of the grandfather clock that Bruce has learned to tune out years ago suddenly gains on a volume that hurts his ears with every heavy tick. 

He opens his mouth, and closes it. He keeps staring at Alfred, whose smile only seems to grow with every passing minute, and turning sharper, too.

“Did you just —”

“Yes.”

“You mean —”

“Yes.”

“You’re —”

“Yes.” Alfred’s eyes shine far too bright, and as he drinks another sip of sherry, sitting back, there’s a tilt to his head which suggests he’s rather enjoying himself.

Bruce wants to get to his feet. He wants to pace around the library, or better yet, run down to the cave and scream. He wants to walk up to the grandfather clock and bash his own head against it, repeatedly, until he passes out. Any of these would be better than just sitting there with his jaw dropping all the way to the floor and feeling like an utterly blind, selfish, pathetic monster.

“You’re not joking,” he finds the voice to ask. “This isn’t some kind of prank?”

“My word, no,” Alfred replies breezily, swirling his sherry in the glass. “Why would I do such a thing?”

“But,” Bruce finally manages to find something to latch onto, “you never said anything! You never —”

Alfred shrugs. He downs the rest of his sherry. “I suppose it’s never come up.”

“Never come up,” Bruce echoes. “All these years, and it’s never — Jesus, Alfred.”

“Master Bruce,” Alfred says, gently, “please imagine what would have happened if I’d been, as they say, out when you were a child. Do you think they’d have let me keep you as my ward? Those were very different times. I’d have been accused of trying to pervert you, or worse. For your sake as well as mine, it was best to keep some things behind closed doors.”

“Even from me?” Bruce asks, and hates how small and pathetic his voice sounds.

“Yes, even from you.” Alfred sighs, finally letting his shoulders droop an inch or two. “I loved you very much and I was not about to let someone else step in and take you away. You and your well-being were far more important than my personal comfort. I had to be very careful about what I did and said, even around you. There was no reason to trouble you with my own baggage when you struggled with so much of your own, and at such a young age, too, and I wasn’t involved with anyone at that time anyway so it wasn’t as though the matter was pressing. I told myself, all in good time. That maybe one day I might bring someone home and introduce him to you properly, and it’d happen more… naturally. But then…” he pauses, and looks into Bruce’s eyes. “Well, let’s just say you had other matters on your mind.”

Yeah. Other matters, like training to become Batman, and then being Batman, and trying to keep it hidden from the world, and working to get better and better and better and solving cases and saving the city and doing everything in his power to help the people in it, and all the while, relying on Alfred to always be there waiting for him and instructing him and cooking for him and cleaning for him and patching him up and having his back.

Bruce stares into space, and then reaches for his own sherry glass and downs it all in one gulp.

He’d never wondered that maybe Alfred might like a night off. That maybe he’d like to go away somewhere on holiday, take a break, meet someone, live his own life instead of just being a part of Bruce’s. All these years, and Bruce never, not even once noticed that Alfred never brought anyone home. That he never called any friends or family, and only seldom maintained correspondence with people he called his “army mates.” That state of affairs has always been so _normal_ for Bruce that it never occurred to him to question any of it, because Alfred was just…

Alfred. 

Just Alfred. Steady and sarcastic and dependable, a caretaker and friend, and Bruce has been taking him for granted so much that he never stopped to think that maybe Alfred might want something more out of life than just heeding Bruce’s every beck and call until retirement. 

He wants to think that he’d assumed, since Alfred never asked for any of those things, that he must not want them…

But no. Not even that. Alfred never asked, but then, Bruce never even considered that he might. And as a result, he’d never even begun to suspect that there was a whole side to Alfred he had no idea about. 

Jesus, he’s such an ass.

“Can I have some more of that?” he asks, raising his glass, and sits there all hunched and pathetic as Alfred patiently refills both their glasses. 

“I must say I did wonder,” Alfred says with that sharp edge of amusement in his voice, “if you’d ever find that out on your own. I suppose over time it’s become a bit of a game. One that I almost regret forfeiting tonight.”

“Oh my God.” Bruce drinks the sherry, and wishes it was something stronger still, completely unable to look Alfred in the eye. “I was so blind.”

“Preoccupied is the word I’d use,” Alfred says gently.

“Selfish,” Bruce counters. “Self-absorbed and blind. I’m so sorry, Alfred.”

“Well,” Alfred says after a moment. “Like you said, I didn’t exactly give you any reasons to speculate about my personal life.”

“That doesn’t excuse me just taking you for granted all those years. I really am sorry. I’ll… I’ll do better from now on.”

There’s another moment of silence, which the grandfather clock slices into neat little pieces.

“We both made mistakes,” Alfred says at length. “And we both need to do better. I’d say we’ve made some steps towards that recently, including tonight. How about we toast to it?”

Bruce takes a deep breath, and nods. He lifts his head to Alfred and raises his glass.

“To doing better,” he says.

“To doing better,” Alfred echoes, and they clink their glasses together.

And as Bruce empties his, a jolting memory tickles the back of his mind until he’s able to pinpoint it, and then he looks at Alfred again, considering. 

He says, “The other day, when I told you about Joker. You said… you said that love should never be a source of shame.” He swallows hard, and it sounds much too loud in the quiet library. “Did you mean…”

Alfred’s smile turns into something cryptic and all at once too private. “Did I mean anything personal by that?”

“Well… yes.”

“I should hardly think that my experiences would be of any interest to you,” Alfred says. “It’s ancient history.”

“No.” Bruce sets his glass down and angles himself so that he leans his back against the armrest and faces Alfred properly. “Please. I’m only now realizing how little I actually know about you and I… I want to fix it. I want to listen. Unless you don’t want to talk about it.”

Alfred contemplates him for a moment. As he does, his face changes subtly, some of the lines clearing, new ones breaking gently over his forehead as he gazes past Bruce into what Bruce imagines must be his own memories.

“Please excuse me,” he says as his smile turns just a touch bitter. “This calls for reinforcements.”

“Sure,” Bruce says as Alfred pours himself a third glass and settles in, taking his time to sort through his memories. 

“Like I said,” he starts quietly after a moment, “it was a different time. Not that it’s all that easy nowadays, but back then… Let’s just say my family wasn’t overly thrilled when they caught me _in flagrante delicto_ with a classmate.”

Once again the skin around Bruce’s eyes pulls tight as he stares, his mouth open. “Wow,” he breathes. “Really?”

“Really.” Alfred smiles into his glass. “His name was Derek. The biggest irony of it all is that we didn’t even manage to get anywhere because we got into an argument over who should top. That’s how my parents found us, with our pants down, sulking on the bed. Not one of my finest moments.”

It takes all the self-control Bruce has drilled in himself over the years not to snort at the mental image, especially since in his mind teenage Alfred looks exactly like present Alfred, complete with his spotless butler regalia and mustache and balding spot. He elects to keep it to himself and fights over the amusement to ask, “Was it very bad?”

“Well,” Alfred twirls the glass gently in his fingers, “you do know that I spent a considerable time in the army?”

“Yeah.”

“My parents’ reaction had more than a little to do with it.”

“Oh my God.” Bruce suddenly wishes for another refill himself. “Did they kick you out?”

“They… left me with little alternatives,” Alfred says quietly. “My father thought the army would, as he said, make a man out of me. And it did,” now there’s an ironic bite to Alfred’s smirk, “just not in the way he expected.”

Bruce shakes his head. “Wow.”

“Those were the days.” Alfred’s voice turns warm and fond as he reminisces. “I’ll have you know I was quite popular with the men in my regimen.”

“I can believe that,” Bruce says, finding himself returning the smile. “You must have been a star.”

“Indeed. And quite the heartbreaker, too, if I do say so myself. Little did my father know he was in fact doing me a huge favor by sending me away, even despite all the usual… army-related unpleasantness. It did help harden me, too. When I came back, there was never any question of sneaking around anymore. I was too proud for that.”

“And brave,” Bruce whispers, and Alfred’s quiet gratitude shows in the way his smile softens for a moment.

“My father, as you can imagine, wasn’t pleased,” he continues, “but your family was wonderfully accepting. They made me feel welcome, adopted me as one of their own. They even used to invite my army associates and whoever else I was involved with at the time over to dinner. I will be forever grateful for all the heart they showed me just when I needed it most.”

There’s that sting in Bruce’s eyes again. He tries to hide it, but must not be doing a very good job of it because after a moment Alfred wordlessly holds out the bottle of sherry towards him. Bruce accepts the refill gratefully and hides the tingle of coming tears in the drink until he’s sure he can keep them in, and clears his throat.

“That’s — that’s good to hear,” he manages.

“So you see,” Alfred reassures him, “that is not something you need to worry about.”

Bruce is just about to nod when another thought strikes him, one that drops cold and heavy into the place inside him that was just on the verge of warming up. 

“But then you had to go right back into the closet,” he whispers. “Because of me.”

“For you,” Alfred corrects immediately. “It was my own choice. By that time I hadn’t really been with anyone for a long time, so it didn’t feel like that big of a sacrifice if it meant I got to keep you. Considering all that your family has done for me, it was the least I could do to pay back their kindness.”

“That still doesn’t make it right,” Bruce insists. “I’m sorry.”

“Dear boy, it’s not your fault. You can’t shoulder _all_ the evil in this world. And like I said,” Alfred sighs, settling into the sofa, “it’s ancient history. I don’t regret my choices in that regard, not a single one.”

Bruce thinks about this for a moment, and then asks, “So have you had any… relationships… since then?”

It’s weird to imagine, but so is everything else Alfred told him up until this point. Bruce feels he has a responsibility to know as much as he can, now. 

He needs to get to know the man who practically raised him properly.

“I did have a… dalliance or two when you went away on your epic quest of self-betterment,” Alfred tells him with a twinkle in his eye that could almost be called mischievous. “But since you came back for good? No.”

“Because I kept you from having a life,” Bruce says quietly, and takes another sip which tastes bitter going down.

“Because I wasn’t interested,” Alfred corrects. “I’d lost most of my appetite for romantic tribulations long before Batman came into the picture. I absolutely forbid you to make my celibacy into yet more kindling on your martyrdom pyre, Master Bruce, do we understand each other? It was a choice. I don’t regret it. That’s all there is to it.”

Bruce nods, forcing himself to accept it. It won’t stop him from feeling guilty, but he respects Alfred enough to at least… try.

He turns to the window again and then lets his gaze travel up, to where he knows Joker is, doing God knows what. Licking his wounds, maybe. Hopefully. Bruce swallows again, and turns back to Alfred.

“So, did you know?” he asks, feeling bolder now, the sherry warming the way for his words. “About me. That I could be interested in men too.”

“I had an inkling,” Alfred replies with a touch of smugness. “You did seem rather taken with mister Dent, for example, before tragedy struck.”

“Yeah,” Bruce nods. The old ache of that still lingers somewhere in the corner of his mind, no longer the first shy fascination with the man Harvey used to be but the guilt of a life he couldn’t stop from ruin, and he doubts he’ll ever be able to fully shake off the residue of those regrets as long as Two-Face exists, usurping Harvey’s place. 

And the thing is, Bruce has known about that part of himself for a while. You don’t get to reach the other side of 35 without learning certain things about your own preferences. He’s caught himself many times in the past noticing other men, admiring them, feeling himself drawn to them as much as he’s been drawn to women. His interest, on the rare occasions when it was genuinely kindled, always seemed to spark because of the person themselves and their character, and their gender was never really a factor influencing him one way or another. It’s just that Bruce has always been so… bad at relationships in general that until Joker, he’d never let himself act on any initial attraction towards men, too sure he’d fuck it up right out of the gate. It’s always been easier with women. He’s already had social scripts to follow for that, rules embedded in the culture, clues everywhere. That doesn’t mean that he’d been any _good_ with women — ha, _no_ — but still, the fact that it’s more acceptable, the fact that there are rules and guidelines for him to fall back on, has always meant that he’s been more willing to let himself try with those handful of women he’d felt drawn to enough to risk it. 

And he can count them on the fingers of just one hand.

With men, it’s always been too scary, too unknown, to even bother trying. Until Joker. Because, again, Joker hardly even registers as a man in Bruce’s perception — much like Alfred is Alfred, much like Selina is Selina and Vicky is Vicky and Harvey was Harvey, Joker is Joker, a massive, blinding, terrifying, alluring force of nature whose gender hardly matters against the monumental power of his entire being, of everything else that he is. Against it, his being a man feels almost like an accident, an afterthought…

Or has, up until now. Because now Bruce is starting to realize what it means. 

He reaches for the sherry again.

Later, he tells himself firmly, making the executive decision to shut down any and all tingling memories of hidden tapes and long fingers caressing a slender white cock. Definitely later. That’s the last thing Bruce needs to worry about right now, and they’ve got time. 

So much time.

Jesus.

He drinks some more.

“What is it?” Alfred asks, sounding amused. “You’re overthinking something again. Can I help?”

“No,” Bruce says decisively, putting that train of thought with all its heat and panic under lock and key for now. He clears his throat and looks up at Alfred. “I was just… thinking about stuff. Attraction,” he adds, noting the crease between Alfred’s eyebrows. “And how strange it is.”

“Indeed,” Alfred agrees easily. “Do you, perhaps, have any questions for me in that regard?”

“Not yet,” Bruce tells him, and from the twinkle in Alfred’s eyes he has a feeling Alfred knows exactly what he’d been thinking about. “Maybe later, but… not right now.”

“Of course. All in good time.”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

They both nod, finding understanding in each other’s eyes, and the air in the library clears, leaving the silence lighter, much more comfortable. This time when they let it stretch the grandfather clock doesn’t sound oppressive anymore — instead, Bruce finds himself rather enjoying the sound, letting the steadfast familiarity comfort him along with Alfred’s presence, once again reassuring, by his side.

He _will_ do better, he resolves as he takes another small sip of the sherry. He will. He won’t take the people around him for granted again, especially not Alfred.

Starting tonight.

“So,” he says quietly, tucking his legs under himself. “Will you tell me about the army?”

“I’m not sure you’re old enough,” Alfred teases.

Bruce snorts and lets his mouth settle into a smirk. “Come on. Tell me some stories. Since I’m not going out tonight anyway…”

“Oh, fine,” Alfred lets out a theatrically put-upon sigh and settles more comfortably against the cushions. “Stories, he says,” he murmurs to his glass. “The young master wants stories. Shall we indulge him? There _was_ that time with the young sergeant…”

“Tell me about the young sergeant,” Bruce asks.

“How detailed do you want it?” Alfred parries with a smirk, and Bruce smiles right back.

He listens with rapt fascination as Alfred launches himself into the story, which turns out to be both hilarious and bittersweet by the end; and then another, much like the first one; and another, and another. Alfred seems to be warming up to it with every word — and every sip of sherry — and Bruce can’t help but be swept right along, and marvel at the man he’d thought he knew so well until he realized that actually he didn’t know him at all.

It ends up being one of the nicest, most pleasant nights Bruce has ever had, even despite the storm that started it; and by the time he notices Alfred’s eyes growing heavy and his voice going softer, the pauses between each sentence longer, he himself also feels pleasantly warm with sherry and love, and just the right kind of tired. He helps a more than a little tipsy Alfred up the stairs and into bed, and carefully tucks the blankets around him, and puts a glass of water along with aspirin on his bedside cabinet.

He decides, right then and there, that Alfred is getting a new watch. Bruce is going to go look for a nice one tomorrow after the meeting with Selina, and wonders if maybe Selina wouldn’t want to tag along for the hunt. She has a better eye for the finer things than Bruce does and might get excited at the prospect.

There’s just one thing he has to do first.

 

***

 

He steps into Joker’s room the next morning a good two hours before he has to leave for the office. Joker’s head snaps up to him immediately and he grins, hunched over the table with some papers strewn around it.

“Morning, beautiful,” he greets Bruce. “What’s it gonna be today?”

“Nothing,” Bruce says, coming up to take his usual spot across from Joker. “I only came to talk.”

He takes a closer look at Joker, and winces inwardly. The morning sun does nothing at all to hide the bruises purpling in stark, ugly color around Joker’s eyes and jaw. There’s one peeking at him from Joker’s neck, too, and he imagines there must be more that he can’t see under all the clothes. For some reason Joker’s decided that it’s suit day today and is wearing the entire ensemble, shirt, waistcoat and purple jacket and all, which, combined with the bruises, pulls Bruce into a disturbing sense of _déjà vu_ that he doesn’t care for one bit, not least because it hammers home just what he’d let happen last night, and why.

He thinks maybe this is why Joker chose the outfit in the first place, and as soon as the thought pops into existence, it hardens into certainty. 

Cunning bastard. 

“Really?” Joker angles his head to the side, smirking. “Forgive me if I find that disappointing. Every time you came in here recently it was to do something exciting. I’m spoiled now, Batsy. You can’t let a girl down like that.” 

“What’s this?” Bruce asks, pointing to the papers.

“Oh, just me being a good boy, doing my homework,” Joker says, waving his hand dismissively. “Mullie gets cranky if I don’t. She thinks Math and Logic problems will be enough to make a new man out of me.”

Bruce smiles. He can’t help it. “Are they?”

Joker’s smirk turns sharper. “What do you think?”

“All right.” Bruce sits back, and lets an afterimage of the smile linger on his mouth for a moment. Then he asks, “J., are you okay?”

“That rhymed!” Joker points out in delight, even as his grin stretches and a hint of color touches his cheeks. “ _J-J-J-J-J, are you okaaaaay_ …” he sings to the tune of Scooby-Doo. 

“J.”

“Play on hay, flay a lay, say it and pay, gay for a day…”

“Please stop.”

“Sorry, that was just a synapse firing. But I do so love it when you call me that, darling,” Joker coos, letting his hand stretch over the table towards Bruce.

Bruce looks at it for a moment, his heart doing a nervous flip. After a few intense seconds of want trying to overpower his common sense, common sense surrenders and he reaches out with his own hand to gently touch the tips of his fingers to Joker’s. 

He rather likes calling Joker that, too, and even more than that, he likes Joker’s reaction to it. 

_Focus._

“I’m serious,” he insists.

“You always are.”

“Are you all right? Do you need a doctor?” Bruce asks quietly, letting his hand move an inch so that his fingers cover Joker’s uneven, mangled fingernails.

“Not anymore than you do, sweetheart,” Joker parries, his other hand coming to stroke along his cheek in a clear jab at the bandage on Bruce’s face. 

“Okay. But if you feel any worse —”

“D’awwwwwww, is this the morning-after blues?” Joker leans over the table, face schooled in mock concern. “Really, darling? Now? Are those nasty crickets at it again, eating away at your beautiful brain, telling you you can’t be a real boy?”

Bruce sighs. He takes his hand away. “I’m trying to apologize here,” he mutters.

“Apologize?” Now Joker sounds genuinely perplexed. “Whatever for?”

“Last night. I —”

“You did nothing I didn’t want you to,” Joker points out. “Come on, Bats, you know better than that.”

“I do.” Bruce takes a deep breath. “I do. Still…”

“Oh no.” Joker is standing up, eyebrows plunging, the amusement quickly giving way to something far more stormy. “Oh baby, no. Please don’t do this. You’re no _fun_ when you do, not like this, not when I’m not in the mood for it. Please don’t try to pretend you’re one of them.”

Bruce makes himself look at him, just in time to catch Joker taking the first few steps towards him. And it’s terrifying just how tempted Bruce is to submit to the arms that are already opening up for him, inviting him in, offering the kind of comfort he still feels he shouldn’t want to accept. 

“The deal,” he reminds Joker with difficulty. “Please, J.”

Joker looks like he’s about to argue, but eventually he lets out an impatient, frustrated huff and gets back to his own chair. He crosses his arms over his chest, prickly, closed-off, and glares at Bruce over the length of the table, so painfully distant that all at once all Bruce wants to do is kick his morals to the curb, go to Joker, fall to his knees in front of him, close his arms around Joker’s waist and bury his nose in the folds of his waistcoat.

“I don’t know if we can keep doing things like this,” he starts instead, forcing himself to stay in the chair. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Yes you do,” Joker counters without mercy. 

Bruce takes a moment, and then rephrases, “I don’t want to _want_ to hurt you.”

“Well then, you’re in quite the pickle, aren’t you? Because I certainly won’t make it easier for you just to indulge your delusions of normalcy.”

“You were indulging me last night, weren’t you?” Bruce argues, making himself hold eye contact. “That’s what it was. You thought if I hurt you I’ll feel better.”

“Ah.” Joker’s posture relaxes by a fraction, as does his face, and he starts to drum slim fingers against his arm. “So I was right. It is the crickets.”

“You can’t let me treat you like this,” Bruce pleads. “Not anymore.”

“Batsy, Batsy, Batsy.” Joker shakes his head. “It never ceases to amaze me how much you love wallowing in all that sorrow. Have you tried poetry? I hear it does wonders for the tortured soul.” When Bruce says nothing, Joker sighs, his face cracking into something softer still. “I told you,” he says, “you didn’t do anything I didn’t want you to. For a start, I wouldn’t _let_ you.”

“Promise me that.”

“Would you trust any promises I make?” Joker challenges. “You don’t need my word on something you already know, darling. There’s no need to complicate something we both know works for us. Now please stop being silly.”

Bruce studies his face. When he finds nothing but earnestness there, with more than a touch of irritation mixed with a strange kind of pity that makes him want to throw it right back in Joker’s face, his cheeks heat, and all of a sudden “silly” is an oddly appropriate word to describe how he feels. As horrifying as it sounds, maybe Joker’s right about this one thing. And maybe Bruce was right too, at the start. Alfred just… doesn’t understand, and maybe that’s fine. He was just trying to help, and naturally he’d be unnerved, but the thing is, Bruce and Joker… 

They’re not what his parents used to be. They never will be, even if they ever reach a point where Joker can walk out of these rooms and into Bruce’s life in a whole new way, because they’re both warped beyond repair by things in their lives that can’t be undone. Trying to fit Joker into a domestic fantasy of what family life, or love itself, _ought_ to be like, won’t work in the long run and could only ruin what progress they’ve managed to make together. All they can do, right now, is keep playing it by ear, and maybe learn from all the mistakes they will inevitably keep making along the way.

But that doesn’t mean they have to stay locked in the same old toxic sludge, either, or that Bruce shouldn’t at least try…

To do better.

“I won’t let it happen again,” Bruce decides, a welcome clarity settling in in a way he could have really used last night. He can see, now, what the real problem was, and it wasn’t just the violence. The violence is a part of something between them that it will be impossible to extricate altogether, and he has a feeling neither of them would even want to try. The problem was the _why_ , the reason he felt compelled to violence last night in the first place. And that, at least, he can do something about. 

“I don’t want to keep reverting to how we used to be before you came here, and that’s exactly what happened last night,” Bruce says. “I was…” Terrified. Of all the changes happening around him, all at once, of people leaving, of his life locking onto a new course, and of being alone, of humiliation, of weakness. He needed something familiar to remind him who he is and what he’s doing, and why. He needed something to ground and reassure, a constant to moor himself to before the current snatches him away for good. 

“Angry,” he settles, “and I took it out on you. It was wrong, no matter how much we both may have needed it. Next time we fight, it won’t be like that.”

Joker sighs, and folds himself into a different position so that his elbows rest on the table and his chin sits cradled in one palm. “For both our sakes I hope you’re bluffing,” he says. “I certainly won’t be holding back. And sweetie, letting the ugly stuff out is healthy. It’s good for you. Just ask Mullie.”

“Maybe,” Bruce mutters. “But not like I did last night.”

Joker studies him for a moment, and then sighs and gets to his feet again. “Suit yourself,” he murmurs as he starts to hunt around the bookcase. “I guess we’ll see about that when push comes to shove, won’t we?”

“Joker —”

“Hush now. I’m bored and you’re making me angry again. I need a distraction. Where is it…”

He trails pale fingers over the spines, muttering some kind of rhyming nonsense to himself, before he lets out a triumphant noise and picks out a book from one of the shelves. Hugging it to his chest, he makes his way over to Bruce.

“How long until you go?” he demands.

“Half an hour,” Bruce tells him. “Maybe a bit more if you —”

“Excellent.” 

He pushes the book into Bruce’s arms without ceremony, and when Bruce catches it, Joker sprawls himself in the patch of sunlight on the floor, closing his eyes and indulging in a luxurious stretch that travels all over his long limbs. Bruce is so distracted by the sight of him — thin arms and legs, so much of them, his hair fanned out over the carpet, the suit and waistcoat hugging tight over his slim body, the sun glinting off his skin, making it look almost ghost-like — that he almost misses what Joker says next:

“From the top, please, love, a-one, a-two, a-one-two-three.”

Bruce blinks. “What?”

“The book,” Joker explains, shooting him a one-eyed look from the floor, mouth curving into a self-satisfied smile that suggests he knows exactly what Bruce was just thinking about. “Read it to me please?”

“Out loud?” Bruce blurts, and Joker giggles.

“I wouldn’t get much out of it if you didn’t, silly.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Bruce grumbles, opening the book.

His eyes go round under the cowl when he spies the title page, and he looks at Joker, but the clown’s eyes are once again closed and he appears to be doing breathing exercises, his breath deliberately loud and steady, short on the inhale and long on the exhale. 

Right.

Bruce turns the pages past the index — all scrawled over in doodles and notes he frankly doesn’t want to decipher — and the introduction until he arrives at the first verses — also vandalized in typical Joker fashion — and clears his throat, and starts to read.

“ _Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost._ ”

He pauses and looks at Joker again.

“Keep going,” Joker prompts without opening his eyes.

Bruce’s eyes return to the page. Ignoring the unsettling crayon doodles, underlines, chicken-scratch comments and everything else adorning the pages is a challenge, but he tries to focus on the print and reads,

“ _Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say, What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more; But of the good to treat, which there I found, Speak will I of the other things I saw there._ ”

He gets through most of Dante’s opening Canto undisturbed right up until Virgil appears. That’s when Joker opens his mouth, if not his eyes, and snatches the lines from Bruce before Bruce can read them.

“ _Not man; man once I was..._ " he starts, and pauses, and takes a deep breath. " _And both my parents were of Lombardy, And Mantuans by country both of them_.” He keeps reciting the rest of Virgil’s lines, and when he’s done, the pause he leaves is expectant.

So Bruce clears his throat again and reads Dante’s reply, and his tongue stutters when he reaches “ _Thou art my master, and my author thou, Thou art alone the one from whom I took The beautiful style that has done honour to me. Behold the beast, for which I have turned back; Do thou protect me from her, famous Sage, For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble_.”

Joker’s smile stretches as he replies, “ _Thee it behoves to take another road, If from this savage place thou wouldst escape; Because this beast, at which thou criest out, Suffers not any one to pass her way, But so doth harass him, that she destroys him._ ”

He takes a longer pause here, still smiling, never once opening his eyes. Time stills as the words weigh on the air between them, and Joker seems content to let them settle over him like dust, or like the sunlight he’s basking in. Bruce watches him and waits, reluctant to make a single noise. 

And then Joker recites the rest of Virgil’s text, word-perfect, and leaves space for Bruce to read Dante’s narration and dialogue, and that’s how they make their way through the first and second Canto. Bruce’s voice breaks a little when he reads, “Thou hast my heart,” and then again at “Thou Leader, and thou Lord, and Master thou” — and Joker’s certainly noticed, judging by the curl to his mouth, but he never says anything and simply lets Bruce read on into the third Canto — only cutting in when it’s time for Virgil’s lines — before the shrill alarm slashes through the haze of the moment like an arrow.

It’s time for Joker’s meds.

“To be continued?” Joker asks as he stretches once again and starts the laborious process of getting to his feet. 

He looks sleepy and content now, peaceful, with the sun bringing out the light in his eyes, and once again Bruce allows himself a moment to appreciate the sight — bruises and all — before Joker reaches out for the book and Bruce surrenders it.

“Okay,” he agrees. “If you want.”

“Very much so,” Joker assures him. “You have a lovely voice. Till we meet again,” he says, and lets Bruce pass him without any surprises. “Watch out for the beasts out there, darling.”

Bruce nods at him over his shoulder before he lets the door slide closed behind him.

 

***

 

He buys the watch for Alfred with Selina’s enthusiastic help. He leaves it in a gift box on the kitchen counter before he goes down to the cave, and smiles when he sees Alfred wearing it the next morning.

“Not a word,” Bruce says as Alfred opens his mouth. “It suits you.”

“It’s a lovely model,” Alfred agrees. “So much so that I suspect you had help picking it out.”

“Hey, I can buy nice things,” Bruce tells him, mildly offended. “I’ll have you know this one was my first choice.”

“Indeed?” 

“Well, no.” Bruce rubs the back of his neck. “But I saw it first.”

“I’m very proud of your developing taste, Master Bruce. Maybe next time you’ll even be able to pick your own tie!” 

“Ha, ha.” Bruce fills up the thermo cup with coffee. “I don’t suppose I can talk you into going to the board meeting for me?”

“We all have our crosses to carry, sir,” Alfred tells him philosophically. “And speaking of crosses, how is the clown?”

Bruce looks at him, and finds nothing but polite interest in Alfred’s face. He’s grateful for it, especially since he suspects how much it’s taking out of him to stay this neutral, and to ask at all.

“He’s… fine,” Bruce says. “We’re fine. For now.”

He hopes.

“That is… good to hear,” Alfred says carefully. “I did worry.”

“Thanks, Alfred.”

“Not for him, mind you.”

Bruce holds his eyes. He whispers, “I know.”

They look at one another for a moment, understanding passing between them, and then Alfred clears his throat, and shoos him out of the kitchen, and Bruce steps out of the Manor into mild skies and clean air and nipping wind, and thinks, Right. Right. One step at a time.

They’re fine. Or they will be.

Somehow.

 

***

 

And so… it begins.

One step at a time.

Hour after hour, day after day. Step by step, word by word, night by night, it begins, and soon, a month passes, and then another, and another, and before Bruce realizes what’s going on his life has stretched yet again to accommodate a new kind of routine he doesn’t even recognize as routine at first.

By day, he wears the Wayne persona with a new spark of energy and purpose Selina’s project has given him. He helps her as much as he can — and as much as she and Leslie will allow — even as he watches their efforts with warm, warm pride that threatens to spill right out of him if he’s not careful. Selina is determined to help turn the East End around without destroying its unique culture, and her enthusiasm is infectious, reminding Bruce just how much he, too, can do even when he’s not wearing the cowl.

And it’s with shame that Bruce acknowledges it’s a reminder he sorely needed.

He uses that inspiration to, first of all, bully and buy his way onto the Arkham board of directors. Jeremiah Arkham has been surprisingly forthcoming and accommodating when the police and ethics overseers descended on the Asylum, probably to deflect any suspicion from himself and keep his place as head of the facility; but even with his new malleability, Bruce makes a point to keep himself involved in the day-to-day workings of the Asylum just to make sure that the changes he means to bring with him are lasting ones. Clearly Arkham needs someone apart from Batman breathing down his neck at all times just to help him stay on top of things — and that’s assuming he really is as ignorant and innocent as he claims. 

In the midst of it all the trials themselves slug on, with far too many suspects getting off with only mild punishments — that’s the Gotham justice system for you — and by night, Bruce makes sure they understand beyond any shadow of doubt that they are to leave the city and never come back. By day, he invests more and more money into reforming the facility from the ground up, recruiting lawyers, social workers and doctors alike to draft new rules regarding employees, background checks, codes of conduct and everything else they can think of to make the patients’ lives easier and weed out as much corruption as they can while making sure they stifle any room for it to grow again. It will, there is just not stopping it in this city, but they can at least work to minimize its scope and reach, and if there’s anything to be done, then by God it will be done. Bruce is not going to stand by and retreat into willful ignorance anymore. 

Reforming the Asylum itself is one thing. But Selina’s community center gives Bruce another idea, and eventually he drafts another project, one that the board isn’t exactly thrilled with but which also generates a lot of support from the city. With the Arkham scandals publicized, most people seem to agree that the inmates there need more immediate help and new solutions, and Gotham officials jump at Bruce’s plan of a temporary group home for outbound Arkham patients to give them a place to stay and offer support programs as they try to get back on their feet. It’s a political move for most of them, but Bruce is not going to turn up his nose at their motives when they’re basically thanking him on their knees for a chance to save face; and as soon as the red tape goes through he starts construction at a halfway point connecting Arkham to the city, close enough to Gotham that it’ll be accessible by public transportation and removed enough to give the patients a safe retreat. 

Dr. Mulligan sits in the front row during the press conference where Bruce first presents the idea. Leslie sits next to her, and they both smile at Bruce throughout the whole thing. 

“Not bad,” Selina tells him later at the fundraiser soiree, clinking his glass to his. “Are you by any chance trying to one-up me?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bruce tells her, but in her answering smirk he sees the message loud and clear: _It’s on_.

As far as rivalries go, Bruce supposes there are far worse playing fields.

By night, he keeps working as Batman, keeping an eye out for Ivy and Quinzel whenever he doesn’t have any pressing cases. There’s not much to go on; Ivy herself is definitely not in Gotham, and Bruce supposes she’s in one of those phases where she recharges somewhere in the Amazon, telling herself she can make do without humans altogether. Those phases never last but Bruce is glad of any respite, and hopes that this time it will take her a while to decide to get back to her mission. With Quinzel the case is harder to crack, and Bruce has intercepted a few police scanner reports from New York about suspicious clown-themed gangs that _could_ be a lead but could also mean another Joker fanclub decided to make themselves known, and that’s not enough for him to move away from Gotham for any extended periods of time. 

For now, he waits.

And as he does, it only takes him a month or so to stop looking over his shoulder expecting to see a bright figure in yellow, red and green at his side. Another month to stop reaching for his comm to call, “Robin.” Slowly, he tries to get used to the silence of lonely patrols again, and sometimes even manages to take comfort in them, despite the hollow squeeze in his chest telling him he’s missing something no matter how hard he might pretend he doesn’t. 

Barbara — _Oracle_ — contacts him with intel sometimes. She’s always brief and to the point when she does and prefers texting to calling, and never says more than she absolutely has to. Bruce knows, through his own roundabout ways, that Alfred and Dick are helping her move out of Jim’s house to a new secret place where she could set up a proper command center, and he quietly bankrolls as much of it as he thinks he can get away with. After a while he starts hearing rumors that she’s trying to recruit a new team to operate in Gotham for her, but for the time being those seem to be nothing more than rumors so he tries not to let it bother him too much. 

Barbara doesn’t trust him anymore — that’s fine. That’s understandable. He’ll respect it. But he hopes she understands that anyone looking to operate in Gotham will have to get through him first, and he’s not going to compromise on it for anyone, not even her. 

Gotham is his. And he is Gotham’s. That’s not about to change anytime soon. 

Jason never calls nor writes, and avoids using his debit card as much as he can so Bruce can’t trace him. Bruce still tries, and manages to remotely follow his trail as far as Quraq before Jason all but drops off the face of the Earth. After that all Bruce can do is monitor news outlets and electronic trails, and keep Jason’s bank account well-fed, and hope.

It’s only when he sees a withdrawal made from Jason’s account in Berlin a month after Qurag that he allows himself to stop imagining his kid’s dead body bleeding out somewhere in the desert and planning a frantic rescue mission. 

And then there’s Dick, who got into Police Academy without any trouble — not that Bruce expected any less — and makes a point to call at least once a week and talk at Bruce about everything in his new life, from his roommate to classes to teachers to what he had for lunch. He also asks about Bruce’s cases and offers insights that more often than not prove really helpful, and every time he does, Bruce misses him — misses all of them, really — so much it feels his heart might just stop.

It’s on one of those occasions that he finally decides to risk it and takes one of Leslie’s pills for the first time. Half a Xanax, like she ordered. Then he sits in the library, waiting for any of the negative side effects he’s read about to kick in, but when the biggest result is the ache in his chest letting up just a bit so that he can think about both Dick and Jason without the impending chill of panic, he finally decides that maybe, just maybe, Leslie might have been right.

He goes to their appointments with a bit more faith after that. 

Not that it ever gets any easier talking about himself, even to Leslie. It never does and probably never will. But she tries so hard to make it all as painless as possible, and Bruce can find it in him to appreciate that. 

She suggests that he should start keeping a diary of his moods, or at least make a note whenever he feels particularly anxious, and try to puzzle out the reason, in writing — she says it might appeal to his deductive mind to, as she puts it, “start investigating” himself. As with the meds, Bruce is reluctant at first — even contrary — but the idea of having actual notes to fall back on during their next session eventually convinces him to try, and he soon realizes that difficult though it is, it does help him. Picking his feelings apart rather than pushing them away, turning them around to poke and prod at the whys until he writes himself raw, does grant him a few moments of clarity of the kind that makes him go, “Oh.” It’s the cause-and-effect kind of clarity, links of a chain clicking together into a thread he can follow, just like when he stands in the middle of a crime scene and suddenly all the clues seem to go together. Soon, when he’s too wound up and frustrated to write entire sentences, he discovers that just putting a name to the feeling, finding a word to translate it, helps too, especially when it feels that there _is_ no word and he’s forced to get creative.

There aren’t a lot of entries in his notebook when he starts. 

Three months in and he needs to go order two more, and gets a curious, tight kind of sensation in his chest as he flips through the pages and imagines some third party looking at them over his shoulder; all the “sadness,” “grief,” “anxiety,” “fear,” single words repeated over and over and over. There’s lot of “anger,” too. He imagines what said third party would think of him. 

And then he thinks of Joker, and the walls he’s scribbled over with nonsense. The pages he seems to fill with words in angry red crayon that he hides from the cameras and keeps in the drawers of the desk. 

The tight sensation gets tighter, and colder, and then warmer all at once.

He brings it up with Leslie next time she sees her, and she smiles.

“You’re not going mad,” she assures him right off the bat. “Don’t worry. It’s good that he has his own coping mechanisms.”

“I sound mad,” Bruce mutters, glancing down at the open notebook. “On the page, I sound a bit…”

“Like him?”

“Yeah.” He looks at the pages some more, and then finds it in himself to ask, “Leslie, what exactly is wrong with me? You never told me.”

She sighs, and folds her hands on her lap. 

“I haven’t given you a conclusive diagnosis,” she starts slowly, “mostly because I don’t think there is one. If you want labels then yes, we can work on that. It might make it easier for you to cope, and I do have a few labels to start with. But the thing is, very often mental issues overlap with one another, and the symptoms will be similar across the board, and identifying with any degree of certainty the exact issue or disorder or anything else that might be happening becomes all but impossible, and worse, counterproductive. My job as a therapist is to give you tools to deal with the symptoms so that they stop holding you back. That’s what I’ve been trying to do so far and that’s all that can be done, at least in your case.” She sits back, offers him a smile. “Although of course you are welcome to prod deeper and seek a second opinion.”

Bruce takes a moment to think about it, and then whispers, “Joker isn’t diagnosed either. Not conclusively. That’s what Dr. Mulligan says they’re doing with him, too: managing the symptoms.”

Leslie nods. “Yes, that sounds about right. God help anyone who tries to diagnose _that_ case… no offense.”

Bruce allows himself a smirk. “None taken. And you’re right. I was just thinking, what you said, that kind of makes the two us… similar.”

More similar than he’s ever allowed himself to admit, in any case.

Leslie is silent for a moment, and then tells him, gently, “Actually, that’s a pretty standard approach to therapy, but if you see it as something to connect the two of you even more, then that’s good. Certainly better than you thinking you’re superior to him, anyway.”

Her eyes twinkle, and Bruce looks away as his cheeks heat up. He doesn’t bring up any more similarities he sees between himself and Joker after that. 

And it’s a raw process, keeping the diary, writing things down, forcing himself to tear up all the places he’s learned for so long to keep hidden; just as the sessions are raw, just as taking the meds is raw, and he always feels as exhausted coming out the other side as though he’d just gone ten rounds with each and every single Arkham inmate one on one. But the sense of accomplishment at the end is a similar one, too. In a way, it is like wrestling with a monster…

One that he suspects he should have tried to take on a long time ago.

And so when, after a few months, Leslie suggests that they should move to a biweekly schedule, Bruce doesn’t protest too hard.

In the meantime, he gives Alfred two weeks off and arranges for him and Dick to vacation together in Italy. Dick is ecstatic about the idea and uses his very own special superpowers of charm and persuasion to get a break from school; and Alfred, although he grumbles and keeps his usual reserved air, telling Bruce a week is “more than enough for you to burn the house down, sir,” eventually relents and even lets Bruce drive them both to the airport. Bruce then spends two achingly lonely weeks in which he has to fight the urge to hole himself up with Joker for the duration and ends up spending more time with the clown than is strictly advisable anyway; but then Dick and Alfred come back, all sun-kissed tans and dazzling smiles. And the photographs, souvenirs and stories they bring back with them are more than enough to feed into long, warm evenings by the fire for another week or so, even if Alfred staunchly refuses to entertain Bruce’s questions about whether or not he met any “nice Italian men” on the trip.

(Dick refuses to spill, too, and only warns Bruce to under no circumstances bring up someone called Paolo. Bruce is disproportionately amused by that even as he decides not to investigate any further.

For everyone’s good.) 

Bruce makes the effort to talk to Alfred more, too, and tries to learn to make tea the way Alfred likes it, and stays up once or twice to make him breakfast. That always earns him a few pointed words of none-too-gentle criticism and raised eyebrows, but a smile as well, and a warm “Thank you, Master Bruce,” and sometimes they sit in the kitchen together in silence, or talk quietly about nothing in particular, the way Bruce has almost forgotten how to do.

It feels… good. Appropriate. And gives him some more brighter memories to cling to when he needs them, and he _does_ need them. Because of course there’s also Joker, and he’s…

Well. Progress isn’t a straight line, is what everyone keeps telling him, and he knows it’s true, for Joker as well as for himself and anyone else. Just as Bruce gets better and worse days, so does Joker. 

And the bad days…

Bad days are when he retreats into himself. Sitting across from Bruce, staring into space. Not saying a single word. When it happens, sometimes Bruce tries to pick up a book at random and read to him, and sometimes Joker will even allow it; but there are also days when he cuts Bruce off with a quiet “I’m tired” or “Please go” or “Lilac,” or just straight up disappears into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

And sometimes there is a sharp gleam in his eyes when he does it, cold like it was in the days before the fireworks, and Bruce watches him and wonders if the dissociating is even real or if Joker is trying to make it difficult on purpose. If he’s faking it to watch Bruce squirm.

He hates himself for those thoughts, and he hates the thick sludgy darkness that sticks to his mouth as their aftertaste, and leaves as soon as it trickles into his consciousness. He has a feeling Joker can read it all from his face. 

Bad days are also when Joker seems to forget where he is, and starts talking not just to himself, but to people who aren’t there, with emotion and agitation he rarely displays at any other time. Sometimes he’ll be talking to Bruce, and Bruce will say something, and then Joker will get that glazed look in his eye like that one time in the shower, and he’ll trail off, and launch himself into a string of nonsense. Other times it won’t be nonsense at all, but scraps of old conversations, arguments, jokes, and that is almost worse because he’ll rattle off names Bruce has never heard before, and address people who for all he knows don’t exist, but the thing is, they might have existed at some point in the past. During those… episodes… Bruce is reminded of the fact that there used to be a time when the Joker wasn’t the Joker at all. And he finds that he doesn’t want to think about that time. It was a time when Joker didn’t belong to him, when Batman wasn’t the center of Joker’s world; and if that time existed once, Bruce’s thoughts inevitably point out, it might exist again. 

Whenever that thought drops into his mind, he always reaches for his diary and writes down “fear.” He doesn’t need to add anything else. He knows precisely where it comes from.

Then there are also the kind of bad days when Joker’s stimming gets worse and worse and worse, and turns into self-harm, and when the manic episodes escalate into panic attacks. They don’t happen all that often anymore, but twice it gets really bad, and when at one point Joker calls for him — _Batsy, Batsy, please_ — Bruce is able to barge into his room and sweep him into a forceful hug from behind, the two of them bent over, Bruce pressing Joker’s shivering body down towards the floor and murmuring “It’s all right, it’s all right, I got you” until the worst of it goes away. The other time though he’s away on patrol, and comes home to learn that Joker had to be sedated for his own good. 

He tries not to sit at Joker’s bedside and wait for him to wake up this time, and only goes to him after he asks through the comm to make sure it’s okay. Joker takes his time answering, but eventually he nods, and they while away an hour sitting next to each other on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, backs to the wall.

“I hate this,” Joker whispers eventually, sounding like a man who’s been screaming for an hour.

“I know,” Bruce whispers back. “But you’re doing so well.”

Joker is quiet again after that, and soon tells Bruce to leave.

That is the worst of it. But then there are also the kind of bad days that are less apocalyptic, less severe, more like the kind of bad days normal people have; but at the same time, and maybe because of that, they are just as horrible in their own way. It’s the days when Joker is not unwell, as such, not in the way he sometimes gets, but he _is_ prickly, obstinate, childish. Difficult. Irritable, and spiked up to the tips of his fingernails for conflict. And when he gets like that his mood is like a spark that kindles the same petty ugliness in Bruce, and they end up annoying one another on purpose until one of them — usually Bruce — storms out.

The resulting silent treatment never lasts very long, but Bruce is still sparking with storm residue for days afterward. Alfred usually avoids him when it happens. Bruce is quietly grateful.

He wouldn’t want any of it to rub off on Alfred, too.

There’s also… things, little things, that don’t even count as bad days. They’re just something that Bruce observes over time that, when he pays attention, makes him worry.

Like the fact that Joker seems to sleep more and more, which on the whole should be good news but which makes something deep and shameful in Bruce hurt anyway because he recognizes it as _not normal_. Or the face Joker makes just before he takes his meds (Bruce closes up on him each time to make sure the pills go where they’re supposed to go). Or that he seems to be eating even less. Or that he seems sluggish more often than not, some of his old energy gone, sapped away by the meds and the longest containment he's ever endured. Or that the skin around his fingernails gets noticeably more and more bloody, or that he can’t keep from touching himself, pinching or scratching or pressing in that same old rhythm Bruce introduced him to what feels like an eternity ago.

Little things like that. 

And then there’s the… other bad days, when Bruce aches with the need to touch Joker, and knows he can’t, and the most he allows himself is when Joker asks for him — dull eyes and tight mouth and twitchy fingers and a tense, desperate “Please, darling” — and he holds Joker’s hand across the table, glove off so Joker can feel his pulse.

His own fingers snagging over the cold metal of the shock bracelet.

Although truth be told, he aches with the need to touch Joker on the good days, too. And that doesn’t get any easier. 

Not when they hold a conversation that may border on an argument but never quite becomes one, and instead sparks with the thrill of mutual challenge, teasing and one-upmanship, and the gleam in Joker’s eyes shines as much as his wit and intelligence do, and it pulls Bruce in instead of scaring him off, and the edge to Joker’s smile is one of quiet longing Bruce knows he can’t keep off his own face, either.

Not when they play cards as much as they play words, and Bruce leaves electrified, giddy with a strange kind of energy that seems to tingle in his fingers as it buoys him through the rest of the day. 

And not when Joker smiles at him _just so_ , and murmurs words that will crawl right under Bruce’s skin to set it on fire from the inside out, and radiate promises that will keep Bruce awake at dawn, rolling around on the too-huge bed in sweet, agonizing frustration.

(Sometimes those pale hours of dawn end with him hanging outside the window to Joker’s bedroom. Joker smiles at him when Bruce does it, and touches his fingers, or his lips, to the glass. When Bruce reaches out from the other side he can almost, almost pretend it’s Joker’s skin he’s touching.) 

Nor does it get any easier when Joker asks Bruce to read for him, and he’ll either lie on the floor with his eyes closed and listen or choose a character to recite, and sometimes it’s Dante and Virgil and sometimes it’s Plato and Socrates and sometimes it’s Othello and Yago and sometimes Achilles and Patroclus and, on one exceptional occasion, Romeo and Juliet; and there’ll always be meaning underneath his words that feels oddly personal, and pointed, and it will leave Bruce to puzzle it out when he’s out cloaked in the city’s night, doing his best to keep it safe.

And not when they watch movies together, and Joker will either stay on the sofa and press his feet to Bruce’s thighs, or sit on the floor by Bruce’s feet and smuggle him messy, _dirty_ sketches, poems or short messages on torn scraps of paper he’ll stuff into Bruce’s shoes under the blanket so the guards won’t catch him. 

And not when they both just sit there in silence reading or working in each other’s company. In fact, that’s when the longing seems to get even worse, because every single time Bruce’s eyes will catch on Joker and linger, and he’ll remember what it was like to hold and kiss him, and then there is no chance in hell he’ll even remember what he was supposed to be doing in the first place.

But then again, he catches Joker getting distracted in exactly the same way, so maybe that’s okay.

When they fight once a month it’s usually a good day, too. Joker keeps his word and doesn’t hold back, and doesn’t let Bruce hold back either, but it never quite descends into the darkness of that first proper fight, and not just because Bruce has learned his lesson and never brings his gloves into the gym with him anymore. They still let out the tension that’s built up in them each month, and use it as a substitute for the other kind of physicality they both want but can’t have just yet, and it’s _agonizing_ , and Bruce supposes it’s still dark, but not… wrong. Not scary. Not the way it used to be. Instead, it’s a relief, the only one Bruce can hope for at this point, and it’s satisfying in a way that can tide them over until next time, so they can look into each other’s eyes sated and calmer and ready to start again.

They manage one more outing into the gardens late into Fall, just before winter breaks over Gotham for good. The wheelchair is still involved, as are the straitjacket and the cordon of guards; but Dr. Mulligan declines to accompany them this time around and the guards, at Bruce’s request, try to hold back, so that Bruce can push Joker’s chair to the fountain and leave them at such a distance that they can at least pretend they’re alone. There, by the fountain, Bruce gives Joker a fake plume of lilac to put in his collar, and the look Joker gives him in response feels like the kiss to the cheek did all those months ago. 

Flustered and all of a sudden feeling like he’s fourteen years old and in a Disney Channel show, Bruce quickly takes out _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ from his jacket pocket and silently presents it to Joker, who keeps his smile on as he nods.

Then, after only a moment’s hesitation, Bruce undoes the shackles at Joker’s feet to free him of the wheelchair and helps him sit down on the bench next to himself. As he opens the book and starts to read, Joker rests his head on Bruce’s shoulder and closes his eyes; and though Bruce knows he’s not asleep his breath still evens out, and matches Bruce’s heartbeat, and Bruce finds himself counting at the back of his mind. 

One, two, three. One, two, three.

But the biggest event by far happens when winter waltzes in for good, laying down a quilt of snow over the Manor grounds that sparkles and crackles in dazzling white. Bruce remembers how distressed Joker was at missing Christmas; and as the streets begin to boast thousand colorful glimmering lights, Bruce gets an idea. 

It takes a good long while before he can talk the guards into it — as Wayne, which makes it extra difficult — and another until he gets Alfred’s go-ahead, but eventually they relent, and on Christmas Eve they all pile into Joker’s rooms with modest gifts and decorations and food, which they set up to the tune of classic jazzy Christmas songs floating gently from the speakers. Joker is so ecstatic he doesn’t even complain about the lack of an actual tree, and helps them decorate the parlor with plastic imitations of mistletoe and holly and wreaths, and sprinkles fake snow everywhere, singing along. 

They allow him to stay uncuffed for the evening as they gather around the table and eat with plastic spoons off plastic plates. The guards still keep their charged prods on hand and never let their eyes stray, and the remote for Joker’s stun bracelet stays secured to Ramirez’s belt, but Joker stays on his best behavior and doesn’t give them any reason to use it. He remains polite if a touch too excitable throughout, and — Bruce can’t help but feel giddy at this — reserves special courtesy for Alfred, calling him “Mr. Pennyworth” in a quiet voice that borders on reverence and praising his food with enthusiasm that never once feels overdone. For his part, Alfred returns the address with a studied stiffness that can’t be lost on Joker, and doesn’t engage unless Joker speaks directly to him, but it’s clear he’s doing his best to keep the bite out of his words and their quiet, stilted interactions fill Bruce’s heart with stupid, premature hope. 

He never even asked Joker to try his hardest with Alfred. Joker decided to do that all on his very own. Bruce shoots him grateful glances after every interaction, however small, like “Could you please pass me some of that _wonderful_ gravy, Mr. Pennyworth, sir” — and Joker replies with a crooked tilt to his otherwise polite smile that shows Bruce he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Smart guy.

After they’re done it’s time for presents. Joker is over the moon to see all of Bruce’s gifts — new shampoos and cosmetics, new socks and underwear, a new purple bathrobe with an embroidered green J, new leather shoes with satin spats and a pair of satin gloves to match — but his absolute favorite seems to be the ugliest Christmas sweater Bruce could find with matching scarf, hat and mittens. At the sight of the set he lets out a squeal Bruce is pretty sure shouldn’t be possible for human vocal cords, then snatches up the lot, promptly sheds the pink dinner jacket he’d been wearing up until that point and wriggles himself into the sweater with so much delight you’d think the ghastly thing was hand-knitted just for him by Charlie Chaplin. He winds the scarf — which is almost as long as he is tall — around his neck too, and plops the hat on his head, and pulls the mittens on too, and presents himself without a touch of self-consciousness to the modest assembly in such a way that Bruce regrets not bringing a photo camera before he realizes that the entire thing is being recorded and he can just screencap it all later from the cave. 

And all the while Joker keeps the charm turned up to eleven, so by the time they’re all lulled into a sense of semi-security by good food and Alfred’s virgin punch and surprisingly pleasant conversation, even Winston, who has always been the one most afraid of Joker, looks just a little dazed. 

Bruce can’t blame him. He’s spent the entire evening staring at Joker like a character in a medieval romance doused in love potion; he can only imagine what effect Joker’s charisma has on others when he really puts effort into it. 

And maybe this is why, in the inevitable lull in conversation that follows the gift-unwrapping, Bruce — still a little out of it, still reeling from the quiet ache in his heart, still throbbing with _Oh my God I really do love him_ — finds the courage to get to his feet, hold out his hand to Joker and ask him to dance.

“Truly?” Joker asks, hand going to his chest like he’s a heroine in a costume drama. He looks to the guards. “Could we?”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Winston warns, and Ramirez nods. 

“Oh, but I wouldn’t hurt Brucie,” Joker promises, putting on his best earnest face, and he looks so goddamn charming as he does that Bruce aches all over in the worst, sweetest way. “We’re friends, aren’t we?” Joker turns back to Bruce, who manages to stay in control of his own faculties long enough to nod. “I’d never hurt a friend, especially not one who treats me so well.”

Once again he deploys the full heat of his entreating gaze at the guards, and Bruce finds himself joining him, saying, “Please. I don’t think anything bad will happen, right, Joker?”

“Absolutely. I’ll be good.”

Ramirez still looks uncertain. “I don’t know about this. We wouldn’t be able to stop him harming you if he gets this close, Mr Wayne.”

“We’ll leave room for Jesus,” Joker promises with a twinkle in his eye.

“Joker hasn’t had a violent episode in months,” Bruce points out, and then amends, “As far as I know.”

“That’s right,” Joker nods. “You’ve read the reports from dear old Mullie, haven’t you? A patient on the road to recovery should be encouraged with positive reinforcement!”

“Technically, the clown’s right,” Winston mumbles. He sighs in defeat, rubbing his face. “Dammit.” He turns to Alfred. “You heard them, Mr. Pennyworth,” he says. “If anything happens here we’re not responsible.”

“You’re not actually suggesting —” Ramirez starts, but Winston only sighs again.

“If you try anything you’re going right to sleep,” he warns Joker, and Joker replies with a solemn nod. Then, he pulls the hat and mittens off and puts both hands in the air to show he’s got nothing in them.

“Clown’s honor,” he announces to the room.

“But —” Ramirez starts again. Winston tugs at her sleeve and bends to whisper something urgent in her ear.

Bruce can’t hear what he says to her and Ramirez’s hair gets in the way of lip-reading, but whatever it is, it’s effective. Eventually her frown deepens, and she ends up looking just as resigned as he does. 

“Fine,” she murmurs. “As long as no one tells the Commish.”

“I won’t,” Bruce promises. “Thank you.”

He glances at Joker just in time to let the full force of his dazzling grin blind him, and then Joker is pulling the knitted monstrosity off and tossing it over the backrest of his chair.

And then he’s taking Bruce’s hand. The moment his cool fingers touch Bruce’s Bruce is swept away on a wave of need so overpowering it’s like a lash of wind during skyscraper-climbing, and when Bruce tries to swallow, just like on the rooftops, the air stings dry going down. 

His hand shakes, just a little, as he gently guides Joker to stand. The worse the want gets the slower his body seems to move, as if it wants to go full slow motion and appreciate each and every second of skin-on-skin contact before he has to let go again for God knows how long. It doesn’t get any easier when Joker stands in front of him and — surprisingly gently — lays his arm down on Bruce’s shoulder, never once dropping his delicate hold on Bruce’s hand. 

That’s when Alfred clears his throat, which is just about the only thing that could have torn Bruce’s attention away from Joker’s face. 

“The punch bowl needs refilling,” Alfred decides. He gets to his feet. “Let me take care of that.”

He shoots Bruce an apologetic smile as he starts on his way out of the room, and as Bruce watches him go, he tries not to feel hurt. It’s fine, he tells himself. It’s still too early for Alfred to be entirely accepting, and Bruce can’t expect any more from him than Alfred’s already given. There’s time. It’ll be fine.

“Come on, baby,” Joker says, standing closer than Bruce remembers, the quiet warmth in his voice startling him. He turns back to him to find that the smile Joker is wearing matches his voice, and his heart tugs painfully, and all of a sudden he’s out of breath again in the best way imaginable.

“I’ll let you lead,” Joker promises quietly, almost in a purr, stepping closer still. 

He slips a meaningful glance at Bruce’s other hand. Bruce gets the clue, and brings it up to let it rest at Joker’s lower back, against the soft, sliding velvet of Joker’s dark purple vest. 

The heated awareness of the guards’ eyes on them is the only thing stopping him from pushing Joker closer and smothering the remaining space between them entirely.

 _I’ll be home for Christmas_ starts wafting from the speakers just as they finally begin to move, setting a slow, almost dreamy pace as their legs fit neatly against the other. _I’ll let you lead_ , Joker’s said, but soon Bruce realizes that he doesn’t have to, and that in fact, neither of them is leading the other — they just sort of _move_ together to the rhythm all on their own. He doesn’t have to guide Joker with gentle nudge and push and pull, not like he often has to do when he’s twirling one of the socialite ladies across the dance floor at fundraising functions, because Joker seems to be reading his intent perfectly just from his eyes, or from the lines of Bruce’s body. One thought ahead, one step ahead, anticipating exactly where Bruce wants him to be, which direction to turn, where to slide his feet. At the same time he leans into Bruce with the kind of ease that tells Bruce he trusts the strength of Bruce’s arms to hold him up, with affection — no, love — warm and sparkling in his eyes and softening his features into something that looks almost human, almost _normal_ , and Bruce is lost, lost lost lost lost lost in this creature, this monster that, for him, is deigning to pretend he isn’t one.

They sway like that, gently, afloat a slow rhythm that drifts around them to settle on their hair and skin like a caress; until the music changes, and _Carol of the Bells_ introduces a faster, more anxious beat that Bruce recognizes with his heart more than his mind. 

One-two-three. One-two-three. One-two-three.

His body moves to it, and so does Joker’s, one mind in two bodies answering a call from the depth of their veins. Their hands, where they previously lay in one another gently, almost lax, now tighten. Joker’s fingers wrap around Bruce’s bicep, creasing the fabric of his suit jacket. Bruce presses his own to the small of Joker’s back. 

They look into each other’s eyes, and Joker’s smile changes, turns darker even as the love in it never budges an inch. 

This time, as they glide in a sweeping circle over the floor, they push and pull at each other in turn, and Bruce’s very blood seems to throb to the beat. 

Their bodies never touch. It’s as chaste as it could ever get between them, with only their hands and their eyes locking, heat surging between one to the other and back, and Bruce is hyperaware of the guards watching their every move, and yet…

It doesn’t feel chaste. When it ends, when he finally lets his hand slip from Joker’s lower back — grudging, drawing a lingering circle against the velvet in goodbye — and when their hands unclasp from one another, imprints of long pale fingers bitten into Bruce’s skin, Bruce feels as dirty with it all as after each of their fights, and barely manages to make himself meet the guards’ eyes.

Joker’s smile, when they finally leave him, touches Bruce’s face like a kiss.

 

***

 

He arranges for the fireworks again for New Year’s Eve, and stands without the cowl underneath Joker’s balcony, in the snow, watching as the lights tear up the sky. 

He doesn’t trust himself to stand next to Joker this time around, and his hand throbs well into the night.

 

***

 

On Valentine’s Day he comes to Joker as Wayne and brings with him, apart from a movie, a heart-shaped box of Belgian chocolates and a bouquet of real blood-red roses, the same shade as Joker’s acid-eaten, painted lips. 

Joker puts the chocolates away with a charming “Thank you” and then takes one of the roses out of the arrangement to examine it.

“No thorns?” he asks, arching an amused eyebrow at Bruce.

Bruce swallows. “No. I had them removed.”

Joker’s smile slants into a pointed edge as he lets his fingers run over the petals. 

“It’s cute,” Joker comments, “that you think this makes them any less dangerous.”

He brings the rose to his lips. He kisses it gently.

And then he crushes the flower in his hand, letting the petals bleed onto the carpet.

“Who says that I do?” Bruce asks, willing himself to stand still.

Joker laughs. He takes the bouquet from Bruce’s hands and carries it off to the bathroom, and soon reemerges with the flowers safely tucked into the styrofoam vase Bruce gave him the first time he gave Joker flowers.

He leaves the flowers on the desk where they can bask in plenty of stark winter sunlight, and then takes his usual seat on the couch, smiling that same, slanted smile up at Bruce.

They watch _My Fair Lady_ together that evening, and when Joker laughs at it, Bruce pretends he doesn’t realize that the blade of that laugh is actually pointed at him.

 

***

 

“He seems to be getting better,” Dick observes with a sense of disbelief another few months later, after even more good days and bad days and bits of moments knitting tight together so that Bruce almost doesn’t feel them pass him by anymore. 

On the screen, Joker sits on the windowsill with his feet bare. He’s writing something again and humming to himself, flexing his toes, tossing his head this way and that to the rhythm of his song.

Bruce watches him too. He nods. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, even through the tension in his throat that forbids him to believe the hope that wants to burst in his chest. “I think so.”

Dick looks at him. He looks like he wants to say something more.

But then he just lets the corner of his mouth quirk up and shakes his head, and says, “I think I got a lead on that new drug ring in Bludhaven. Here, take a look at this.”

He pushes a thick case folder towards Bruce, who accepts it and starts leafing through the contents. He feels Dick’s eyes on him, bright and intense, but pretends he doesn’t, and Dick doesn’t say anything else about Joker for the rest of his stay.

And Bruce tries to take his cue from him and go about his routine like he can’t see the same thing Dick does — that recently there’s been more good days than bad days, that the good days keep getting better, that _Joker_ looks like he keeps getting better — because it’s dangerous to hope.

Hope can deceive. Hope hurts when it’s shattered. Bruce doesn’t want to start to expect something he still fears, deep down, may never actually happen.

But days go on. And nights go on. And they keep getting good days, and the bad days aren’t as heart-wrenchingly terrible anymore, or not compared to what they used to be. And Bruce spends hours just sitting in the cave watching the screens, the current feed from Joker’s rooms as well as older recordings, and he doesn’t _want_ to compare but he does anyway, and…

And he hopes. 

God help him, he hopes.

And the more he hopes, the more he’s afraid.

 

***

 

The changes start happening not long after that. 

It begins with Dr. Mulligan telling them that Joker is now to be allowed access to cable TV, only for a limited number of hours per week with a firm ban on news channels at first, and then whenever he asks for it. 

Then she says that it’s okay to play Joker music when he asks for it, too, and that he can make requests.

Some time later she decides that it’s time to let Joker use proper utensils with his meals, and gives the green light on giving him actual cleaning detergents too. The first time Joker handles an actual knife Bruce watches him with his heart in his throat, but nothing happens, and the most significant thing about it is that Joker studies the knife in his hand for a lingering moment before cutting into the veal with a smile that is maybe a touch too pointed, but otherwise normal. 

Next comes the suggestion to take Joker out into the gardens again, without the chair this time. He is to be allowed to walk on his own, which means no chains on his legs, either. 

Dr. Mulligan joins them on that walk and keeps a hawk-sharp eye on Joker, and pretends she doesn’t notice Bruce’s questioning looks no matter how hard he stares at her. Strangely enough, when the walk concludes with no incidents and with Joker on exemplary behavior throughout, her mouth seems to thin even more, and instead of pleased she only looks more tense.

And Bruce _still_ does his best to resist the hope that is now threatening to burst into full bloom, right up until Dr. Mulligan requests a visit with Joker — in person, face to face, and with the sound off on the surveillance.

She allows Batman to escort her all the way to the door. Then she turns.

“Don’t even try to eavesdrop,” she commands. 

Bruce still hesitates. “He could hurt you,” he tells her quietly, “without me in the room.”

“The guards are putting him in a straitjacket as we speak. I’ll be fine.”

“Even so —”

“If he does hurt me,” Dr. Mulligan cuts him off decisively, “then we’ll know just how much there’s still to do.”

They face off in the hall, neither of them budging, until the doors to Joker’s rooms whoosh open and the guards exit, looking just as wary about the whole thing as Bruce feels.

“He’s all yours, Doc,” Carter says. “All nice and cuffed.”

“Thank you, Officer,” Dr. Mulligan says politely. “That’ll be all. Remember to keep the sound off. I’ll review the recording later.”

Carter and Winston exchange looks. Then Carter says, “Fine. It’s your funeral.”

They stay outside — all three of them — as the little old lady, her head held high and the set of her shoulders proud and confident, ventures straight into the belly of the beast. 

Then the guards drag themselves up to their station, shooting Bruce uneasy glances on the way.

Bruce stays in the hall and waits for the doctor to come out.

It takes over two hours.

But eventually the doors slide open again, and Dr. Mulligan comes out looking rattled and tense but unharmed, and she sighs when she sees Bruce standing more or less exactly where she’d left him.

“And?” Bruce asks.

She watches him for a moment, expression unreadable.

And then she says, “He wants to see his lawyer.”

 

***

 

Bruce has met Milton Delgue, Joker’s attorney, several times before. The man, when Bruce leads him through the Manor, looks more like a tenured Harvard professor than a lawyer, with his small hunched posture and his balding patches and glasses and an old-fashioned mustache and the way he clutches his briefcase close, but Bruce knows better. He’s seen the man in court before. 

For all the years Joker’s been active in Gotham, Delgue has successfully kept the city from having him executed. Anyone who can manage something like this deserves to be reckoned with.

Delgue has several alone sessions with Joker, as does Dr. Mulligan. Each new visit leaves Bruce unsettled to the point where not even Leslie’s pills can help him sleep, because he knows what it means even if he’s not allowed to listen in.

Change is blowing through the Manor, and what used to be a tentative breeze now threatens to break into a gale. 

And then it really breaks — and even with all the signs, Bruce realizes he isn’t ready for it when it comes.

It sweeps into the Manor for good the morning Dr. Mulligan and Delgue both cross the threshold, looking grim but determined; and behind them, Assistant District Attorney Beaudreau steps inside, sweeping her short hair out of her eyes. 

Closing the procession is Jim Gordon with a handful of police tailing him. When Bruce meets them all by Joker's door Jim raises his eyes to him only once, and the tension in his jaw clearly signals just how badly he wishes he didn’t have to be here. There’s deep shadows ringing his eyes, too, that tell Bruce he hasn’t slept for at least two nights in a row. 

“All ready?”

Dr. Mulligan asks.

“He’s restrained,” Bruce tells them quietly. He doesn’t add that he was the done doing the restraining, and keeps Joker’s quiet, whispered _See you on the other side, love_ to himself. 

Jim nods. He doesn’t seem any more confident at that, and his hands are beginning to shake.

“God, I need a drink,” he murmurs, and next to him, Dr. Mulligan lets some of her outer armor soften.

“It’ll be over soon, Commissioner,” she promises, “and I will be glad to spare you an hour later to talk, if you need it.”

Jim shakes his head immediately. If possible, the tight hunch of his shoulders makes him look even more uncomfortable than he was before she opened her mouth.

“No offense, Doc, but I’m not exactly at home with shrinks.” 

Dr. Mulligan doesn’t seem offended at all. She simply nods at says, “I understand.”

“Right.” Jim eyes the closed door to Joker’s room as though he’s staring at the gates of hell itself, and in that moment Bruce imagines it must be apparent to everyone in the hall that this is the first time Jim is about to come face to face with Joker after everything that happened at the funfair, over three years ago now.

“Jim,” Bruce says softly, before he can stop himself. “You don’t have to go inside.”

“Like hell I don’t,” Jim sighs, sticking his hands into the pocket of his greatcoat. “I’m the goddamn police Commissioner. Let’s just get this over with.”

He looks to Delgue and Beaudreau. The Assistant DA keeps her hand on her purse and murmurs, “The sooner we go in the sooner we get out of here,” and Delgue swallows loudly but nods.

Dr. Mulligan then turns to Bruce and says, “Batman, if you would be so kind.”

Bruce turns to the panel by the door and enters the security code.

Once again he is left to stand and wait by the door as the entire procession — the doctor, the assistant DA, the lawyer, Jim and his police escort — troop inside. As the doors close behind them with an air of finality, Alfred quietly steps from the shadows of the staircase and comes to stand by Bruce’s side.

Wordlessly, he presents Bruce with the Xanax and a water bottle. Bruce accepts them both and washes the pill down with half of the bottle’s contents, and then they lean against the wall side by side, letting the minutes tick by.

“It’ll be all right,” Alfred says into the silence.

“I don’t know that it will,” Bruce whispers. “Alfred, I… I have no idea what will happen.”

Alfred sighs. He lays his hand down on Bruce’s shoulder. 

“I imagine it must be rather… scary,” he offers.

Bruce closes his eyes. He whispers, “Try terrifying.”

Alfred’s hand squeezes over the cape.

“Whatever the result,” he says, “you’ll come through. Think how much you’ve achieved already. Even if today turns out to be a disappointment, remember that it’s only a setback, and doesn’t mean —”

“That’s the point,” Bruce tells him, letting his head drop to fix his gaze into the floor. “It’s not the setbacks I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of what happens if…” He takes a deep breath, presses a hand against the cowl and feels the rough, rubbery texture of it dig into his scalp. 

“If things do move ahead?” Alfred suggests when it becomes clear Bruce won’t be able to articulate it.

“Yeah.” Bruce nods, and finally lets himself slide down the wall to sit on the floor. 

And God, isn’t that just horrible? He’s waited so long for this. He’s hoped, and dreamed, and wanted so badly not even Leslie’s pills could chase the want away, and Joker, God, Joker’s been stuck in those rooms for more than two years, just for Bruce. And on the one hand, the want now is getting so bad that Bruce is all but ready to burst out of his own skin.

But on the other, he’s fucking terrified. Now that the moment finally seems to be there, or close enough… Now that they’re both, possibly, on the verge of what they’ve worked and longed for all this time, he’s so terrified he almost hopes that when all those people come out that door again they’ll tell him “sorry, we need to start over.”

He’s never been very good at dealing with the new, or the unexpected. Without a map, he’s blind.

And there can be no map to where he’s headed. 

“What if I told you,” Alfred says after another long moment, “that what you’re feeling is completely normal?”

Bruce snorts into his hand. His skin seems to be getting colder under the cowl, and he drinks some more water. 

Alfred lets another moment float by before he sinks down to sit next to Bruce, right there on the floor. It’s the least dignified Bruce has ever seen him, and he has seen Alfred in his dressing down. 

“I remember,” Alfred starts in a quiet voice, “the first time I kissed another boy.”

That is enough to finally force Bruce to look up. He turns his head to Alfred, who offers him a gentle smile.

“I had a most awful crush,” Alfred confesses. “I’m afraid I was rather pathetic about it, too. If anyone had ever taken a look at my notebooks at that time… Good grief, all the hearts on the margins.” He shudders. “If you ever tell anyone about this, Master Bruce, I’m afraid I shall have to kill you.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Bruce promises, and for the moment the incredulous amusement manages to push past the fear. 

“Well,” Alfred continues, “I was lucky enough to discover that at least some of that attention was… reciprocated. Eventually I received a note from him asking to meet him after classes behind the old gym building.”

“And?” Bruce asks. “How did you feel?”

“Much as you do now, I imagine,” Alfred confesses, “Completely out of my mind with fear. You see, the crush had become such an integral part of my life by then, I almost couldn’t imagine living any other way. I got used to things being the way they were, to the point where I didn’t want them to change. It almost seemed right, after a fashion, and I was at the age when romanticizing pain comes naturally, and one revels in all the heartbreaks, deep and small, because they appear to make one’s life grander than it actually is.”

Bruce lets that sink in for a moment.

Then he murmurs, “You got comfortable with the heartache.”

“Yes,” Alfred admits, “in a way, yes. And I was so scared of losing that comfort, that familiarity, that I very nearly declined his offer.”

“But you didn’t,” Bruce guesses after a moment.

“No, I didn’t,” Alfred agrees. “And I’m glad for it. If I had, I would have missed out on a wonderfully sweet, naive, if predictably juvenile adventure that emboldened me to accept who I was and gave me memories I still cherish to this very day.”

Bruce considers his words, and eventually comments, “It’s not quite the same.”

Because it’s not just change he’s afraid of, or maybe not change in the sense that Alfred means. He’s also terrified at the thought that if everything goes well, soon now, Joker might… no longer be under his control. He’ll be free, and Bruce will no longer have the assurance of him being right there, in the same place, ready and waiting for Bruce when Bruce needs him. Of being _his_. They’ll move to a whole new uncertainty, and to make his own promises work, Bruce will have to…

Trust Joker.

And he can’t. God, he just can’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

And that is a terrible thing to be afraid of when you’re in love with the person you’re jailing, but there it is, and Bruce has no idea how to begin dislodging that feeling.

“No, I suppose not,” Alfred allows. “There is so much more at stake here. So much more responsibility. Which only makes it more natural for you to be afraid.”

Bruce swallows, and lets the armored back of his head hit the wall.

He whispers, “Thank you, Alfred.”

Not that he feels any less wretched about his own reactions, but…

Alfred is here with him, supporting him, offering help. Despite everything. 

And that alone makes Bruce feel better about anything that may lie in store for them.

 _Whatever happens,_ he reminds himself, _I’m not alone._

And Alfred doesn’t let him forget it for one moment, sitting there on the floor next to Bruce right up until Joker’s doors open again.

Jim is the first to get out, and does so by storming away at a pace that’s just short of an actual run. Delgue isn’t very far behind, although he looks exhausted, and drags himself rather than runs down the hallway, sparing Bruce a terse nod. Baeudreau follows, and she, in turn, looks angry, clutching the strap of her purse so hard her knuckles look white. 

Dr. Mulligan is the last to come out, after the police file out and trail after the others. As she looks over her shoulder by the door, she’s saying “— don’t forget that.”

“Yes, Doc!” Joker’s voice calls out, and she nods, then turns and lets the door shut behind her.

She doesn’t seem surprised to see Batman still out there. She takes a moment to push the glasses up her nose and rearrange her ponytail, which had gone loose at some point while she was inside.

Then she looks into Bruce’s eyes again, and doesn’t smile when she says, “He’s ready.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not only is this chapter late but it's also all over the place. Sorry, guys - I'm just really no good with transitions. *hides*
> 
> So let's focus on the good things, shall we? I've gotten some absolutely GORGEOUS gifts between the updates and I can't wait to share, like [this stunning commission](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/159161149968/batsylovesjoky-commission-for-the-lovely-dracze#notes) from batsylovesjoky, and this [heartbreaking poster-like art from the amazing Mellie](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/158493089183/melamungous-mellie-art-happy-birthday-to-you#notes), and sauntervaguelydown did [this delightful sketch of J and Bats reading Othello](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/157984371263/sauntervaguelydown-my-favorite-part-of-the-hwa#notes). I also got this [beautiful painting from Dani](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/157978429293/hi-there-my-name-is-dani-and-i-really-really#notes), and [this magnificent sketch of the shower scene](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/157898409518/i-only-just-started-reading-half-way-across-and) from toxicitae, and last but not least! Joke-kerrs has been hard at work adapting this fic into a comic, and [ the results have left me crying on the ground. ](http://dracze.tumblr.com/post/157946276878/joe-kerrs-half-way-across-chapter-one-pages-1) You guys are treasures and I want to tacklehug each and every one of you, thank you so, so much!
> 
> And many thanks to synthwaves for helping out with this chapter <333
> 
> Hope you enjoy another monster update, everyone.

Things move quickly after Dr. Mulligan’s announcement. 

Decisions. Paperwork. Negotiations. More paperwork, and more tough decisions, and compromises, and uncertainty hanging like a rain cloud over it all. Tense debates between lawyers, doctors and the police. The question on everyone’s minds is “Now what?,” until Dr. Mulligan finally comes up with a plan that no one likes but that they have to agree to anyway, because alternatives are running short and none of them are acceptable.

Another month races by in a flurry of activity. Bruce and Dr. Mulligan take two field trips to the neighboring state to inspect and reassure and prepare. Joker is privy to none of it. They only inform him once they have it all figured out and ready to go. His smile never changes as he’s told what his nearest future will entail.

He does look at Bruce though, with calm, knowing eyes. Too knowing. Bruce has to look away before his face betrays more than he’s ready to share.

And then, far too soon, it’s time for Joker to go.

The van arrives just in time to catch the last of the evening light. It’s the same nondescript black that drove Joker here two years ago, carrying guards whose expressions are just as tense as they were back then.

Bruce watches in silence as, Dr. Mulligan leading the way, they guide Joker out of the rooms. Handcuffs, but no straitjacket. No chair. No drugs. Joker walks outside on his own two feet, head held high, and his eyes are clear jade green as they find Bruce.

He’s smiling. The curve of his mouth echoes the words he’s whispered into Bruce’s cheek not minutes before.

_Trust me._

They walk him into the van and close the door on him and the doctor. The engine starts. The van begins to move towards the gate, and then past it, rounding a corner that finally takes it out of sight. 

Bruce stands there on the empty driveway alone, watching them go until there’s nothing but the sun dipping below the horizon, streaking the world in black.

 

***

 

That was yesterday. This is today. And it doesn’t hurt any less.

“So.” Dick clears his throat discreetly, standing just a little way behind Bruce. “You ready?”

“Yeah.” Bruce stares at the closed doors.

“Only you haven’t moved for like two minutes and you’re the one with the code.”

Bruce shakes his head. “Sorry. It’s just…” 

He puts his hand over the cold keys, not hard enough to press.

“You wanna do this another time?” Dick asks.

Yeah. Bruce really kind of does. But he knows that, as with all uncomfortable, _personal_ things, if he starts putting it off he’ll never get around to doing it. The worst is already behind him. All he has to do now is… 

Get on with it. 

One, two. Three. 

On three, his finger presses on the first digit of the code, and then he types in the rest entirely by muscle memory. He stares at the door, which is opening now. The door which, for the first time in two years, he doesn’t need to close behind him the moment he steps in, because the boogeyman inside is gone. 

He expects silence going in. The sound-proofed stillness of dust settling, of air unmoved by breath, of emptiness where laughter and warm words should be. 

Which is why he’s taken aback when instead of stale, night-old air, a lash of wind comes at his face at full speed the moment he takes the first hesitant steps inside.

 _He’s left the balcony open,_ Bruce realizes, and absurdly, the thought brings a sting to his eyes.

Quickly, before Dick can see, he blinks and forces himself to focus on the curtains that flap and billow on the fresh clean breeze tumbling in from the outside, curling with the distant smell of grass and rain. The breeze races past Bruce and out into the rest of the Manor, chasing whatever ghosts still linger in those rooms, and Bruce can almost, almost imagine it laughing as it flies by. 

_Well played, J.,_ he thinks as he swallows the lungful of fresh garden air and tries not to expect a head full of green hair to poke out from the bedroom, greeting him with a sleepy “Surprise, darling.” 

“It’s so weird,” Dick says quietly, coming to stand beside Bruce and looking around. “I guess two years is a long time but I never expected I’d enter any kind of room and go, Gee, I wish the Joker was here. Just goes to show we can adapt to absolutely anything, even a killer clown living in your house.”

Bruce glances to him and tries not to smile at Dick’s wording. It was probably a slip but even so, Bruce lets the hinted admission that Dick still considers the Manor his home warm him as he takes another long look at Joker’s abandoned living room.

Empty, he corrects himself. It’s empty, not abandoned. Abandoned would mean he’s never coming back. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, struggling past the queasy lurch the thought brings. “It is weird.”

“Are you okay?”

“No. But I will be.” Bruce squares his shoulders and braves another step into the space that, even with the animated movement of the wind and curtains, even with the soft murmur of sounds invited in from the gardens, even with the breeze on his skin, is still far too quiet. 

He’s sure that’s why Joker’s left the balcony doors wide open when they came for him last night. So that Bruce wouldn’t have to face a tomb brimming with old, memory-laced smells, like citrus and chemicals and crushed, dried roses. So that there’d be some kind of motion. Some kind of — 

Life. 

He comes up to the sofa. He lets his hand linger, trace the edge of the backrest, catch on soft upholstery. 

_A head leaning against his shoulder. Kissing it lightly._

_“It’ll be all right, baby.”_

“So you said they took him to a halfway home,” Dick ventures after a moment, apologetic, like he doesn’t want to intrude on Bruce’s memories but feels that he should anyway. “Tell me more? I know you said you didn’t think it was a good idea, but…”

“It’s not.” Bruce sighs, letting his hand drop, clearing the small, intimate moment from the forefront of his mind. “But we had no other choice. Dr. Mulligan insisted that he needs a point of transition. We need a test to see what he’ll be like around people but still in a controlled environment. This was the only solution she could think of that wouldn’t put innocent people in danger.”

“Yeah.” Dick stays silent for a moment. “Obviously he couldn’t go back to Arkham.”

Bruce’s hand balls into a fist before he can stop it. “No.”

“Right. And a regular prison was out of the question?”

“Yes,” Bruce tells him, forcing as much of the brittle steel as he can out of his voice. “His doctor wanted a neutral place that wouldn’t remind him of Arkham and there’s… too many risks in a prison.”

“Yeah.” Step by reluctant step, Dick gets closer. “But the halfway home she found is for felons?”

“Yes. It’s a reentry program. Somewhere they can stay until they get on their feet.”

“What did you think of it?”

“It’s…”

Bruce hesitates. He remembers the unremarkable, practical and clean building tucked behind an electric fence on the outskirts of a small town in the neighboring state the likes of which litter the country in droves. He thinks back to the cramped but well-furnished bedrooms that lock on the outside, modest leisure facilities, CCTV cameras, windows running the length of walls to tempt sunlight inside. No towers. No turrets, no no stained-glass windows, no gargoyles. Only sharp glances of sharp men with sharp hearts who wouldn’t look at him except to assess him as a threat, and quiet aides, and a kind-eyed, dark-skinned Doctor Angelica Harris, director of the facility and Nisha Mulligan’s personal friend, smiling at him and Nisha in greeting even as she was faced with a decision that would put the entire place at risk.

“It’s nothing like Arkham,” he finishes. 

“That’s… good, right?”

“Yeah.” He hopes. He doesn’t add that the place felt entirely too _ordinary_ to be Joker’s home, no matter how temporary. He has a feeling it wouldn’t go over well.

“I just can’t help but wonder…” Dick hesitates, “You know, if it’s the right time.”

“I don’t think it is,” Bruce confesses, “but Dr. Mulligan made the call. She said that it was either now or never.” It’s harder than it should be relaying that to Dick, and revisiting Dr. Mulligan’s worn face and anxious eyes, and the fear lurking in them as she tried to explain the reasoning behind her decision in the car on the way back from the halfway home, as though she felt she needed to justify herself — to Bruce, or maybe to the world as well. 

_He’s getting restless. Impatient. If we don’t make the call now he’s certain to relapse. So either we try to keep him here longer and face that certainty, or acknowledge the progress he’s made and risk only a potential relapse. There’s no good choices here, Bruce. I accept that it is my responsibility, even though it could very well mean there’ll be blood on my hands._

Even now Bruce cringes at the inner storm those comments unleashed in him when he first heard them, the protests he had to bite back, _But we had a deal, J. wouldn’t go back on it now_. Those protests rose up in the voice of an 8-year-old child, and the man Bruce is now knows better. A deal is one thing, but prolonged confinement is another. The Joker is a proud creature. Nebulous promises of a happy ending would only keep him committed for so long, and if his new, redoubled efforts had gone unrewarded for another year or so he might have just decided the reward wasn’t worth the price.

It’s a cold, cold thought. Bruce discards it now before it can chill him any further. What’s done is done, and all he can do now is trust that Nisha knows what she’s doing.

“It wasn’t an easy decision for anyone,” he whispers.

“Yeah, no kidding. If anything goes wrong…”

“Exactly.”

“No wonder she wanted to keep the shock bracelet. I’m just floored you let her.”

Bruce lets his head drop to the sofa again. “She’s the only one up there with the remote and the code to use it.”

“Still, the fact that you trusted her with it…”

Bruce is silent for just a beat too long.

“Bruce.” Dick pokes him in the shoulder. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Bruce protests, but the skeptical tilt to Dick’s eyebrows tells him his son is having none of it. He lets his head drop. “I… may have gone back there at night and hacked into their cameras,” he confesses.

Dick groans and rubs his forehead. “Of course you did.”

“I couldn’t just leave him with some strangers without a way to see what’s happening to him,” Bruce insists, the bristly defensiveness rising up to his throat like bile. 

“No,” Dick murmurs, examining him, “I guess not. Not after Arkham.”

“Not after Arkham,” Bruce agrees darkly. And then sighs. “The point’s moot now, anyway. I don’t have access to the feeds anymore. Barbara cut me off.”

“Barbara —” Dick’s jaw drops, and then he shakes his head. He murmurs, “Figures. I’ll talk to her if you want.”

“No, that’s — that’s all right,” Bruce manages. “I’ve thought about it and she was probably right to do that. He… he’s out of here now. He has a right to work on himself without me watching his every move.”

There’s silence, tainted with disbelief and surprise in equal amounts. 

And then Dick whistles. “Wow, I almost bought that one. Just how much did it cost you to say that? And what’s the catch?”

“A lot,” Bruce admits over a dry smirk, “and the catch is that I have failsafes in place to control the bracelet remotely. They won’t have a chance to abuse it.”

“Does he know?”

“He probably does.”

“ _Probably_?” 

“There was no need to tell him,” Bruce argues. “He knows me. He realizes I wouldn’t just give him up without a way to keep him safe.” 

“You’re probably right,” Dick allows with obvious reluctance. “He really does know you.” 

He sighs, and it punctuates another long moment of silence between them. 

Until, “Did you guys get to say goodbye?” 

Bruce is surprised enough to stare at him. Dick faces him with an expression he cannot read, and eventually, Bruce simply says, “Yes.”

Once again he looks to the sofa, and it comes alive for him with the memory of him and Joker sitting on it side by side watching the sunset draw near, counting the minutes away. Joker’s distant gaze as he looks out to the city beyond the woods. His quiet, _“Strange to think I’m finally leaving.”_

_Bruce’s own discomfort, his hesitant, “How do you feel about it?”_

_Joker’s crooked smile. “Elated. Can’t you tell?” A cold, nervous gleam beneath the grin. His fingers twitching. Bruce wishing he could soothe them with a kiss._

_“I don’t like this.”_

_“I know you don’t, baby.”_

_“Promise me you won’t destroy everything we’ve worked on when you’re away. Promise me this.”_

_“Only if you promise to keep waiting for me.”_

_“Of course. I just…”_

_A head coming to rest against his shoulder. “Shhh. I know. Just… trust me, okay? One day you’re gonna have to. Might as well start learning now.” A gentle kiss to his shoulder. “It’ll be all right, baby.”_

Bruce closes his eyes as the memory burns just under his eyelids, trying keep it there just a little longer. 

Trust him. 

God, if only he could. 

“When are you gonna see him again?” Dick asks with marked hesitation.

“Dr. Mulligan said to wait two weeks with a visit,” Bruce says, drawing himself back into the here and now, letting the stark sunlight of the afternoon pierce into the gloom of the memory. “That J. — that Joker should get settled in the new place first without any reminders of his confinement here.”

“Two weeks isn’t that long,” Dick points out. “It’ll fly by in no time. You’ll see.”

Bruce takes a deep, steadying, breath, and turns to him.

“I appreciate you being here today,” he tells Dick, “and I’m grateful for the effort, but you don’t need to try and comfort me. I know this must be hard for you.”

Dick shrugs. “Just trying to show sympathy,” he murmurs. 

“I know.” Bruce hesitates, and then reaches out to squeeze Dick’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

This surprises a smile out of Dick, and he looks away, forcing a chuckle that doesn’t cross into awkward only because it’s Dick doing it. “Is that the first time you’ve said that to me? Because it feels like it is.”

Bruce frowns. “It can’t be. I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before.”

“I mean, maybe? Probably? But wow. It still feels weird. Good weird! But weird.”

Bruce’s heart twists as he lets his hand fall away. There’s words that should go here. Important words. It’s that kind of moment. 

But the harder he tries to dig for the right ones the more they escape, and the more time passes as they both stand there in silence that just keeps gaining layer upon layer with every passing second. And he takes too long. He misses his cue. 

Because when Dick finally looks up it’s with a smirk that still looks just a shade awkward but mostly clear, and that communicates quite clearly to Bruce that the moment has passed. 

Especially when Dick teases, “So. ‘J.’, huh?”

Oh hell no. Bruce is not getting dragged into _that_. “We should get started,” he says loudly, turning away from Dick to fix his gaze on the vandalized walls.

“You actually got a pet name for him. I don’t think you’ve ever had a pet name for anybody before.”

“Dick.”

“I mean, you never even called Catwoman ‘kitty’ or anything like that and the opportunity was right there. Come on. Or would you have preferred something like… ‘S.’?”

“I am not having this conversation.”

“So when you were calling him ‘clown,’ was that an endearment too? What about the Mountebank of Mirth? Grinning Ghoul? Was that you flirting the entire time?”

“Please stop.”

“Are you making fun of Master Bruce, Master Richard?” Alfred asks to mark his entrance, pushing a cart loaded with mops, rags and cleaning supplies into the room.

“Alfred! Perfect timing,” Dick calls a bit too loudly, turning to the open door. “We were just about done with the obligatory awkward bonding. And yeah, I am making fun of him.”

“For shame,” Alfred admonishes. “Next time please wait until I’m there with a good glass of wine so I can enjoy it properly.”

“Noted. Here, let me take that,” Dick rushes to Alfred’s side and intercepts the cart. “So Alfred, did you know Bruce is calling the Joker ‘J.’?”

“Good heavens.” Alfred’s eyes twinkle with amusement. “How romantic.”

“Wait until the Titans hear about this. Pet names!”

“No one is hearing about anything or I’m writing you out of my will,” Bruce threatens.

“Then Alfred will just put me in his, right, Alfred?”

“Quite. No need to be so dramatic, Master B.”

That’s when Dick loses it entirely and bends over the cart to laugh, not even bothering to hide it anymore.

“Is this really happening,” Bruce grumbles, and imagines his face is just about hot enough to give Victor Fries and his Freeze Ray a run for their money.

And then he decides to let it go. At least the sound of Dick laughing seems to have cleared some of the citrus-scented cobwebs from the room, making it easier to breathe, and the silence has eased up on the tension a bit, and…

Well. The least they deserve is a bit of a laugh at his expense. 

“So, where do we start?” he asks, pushing the long sleeves of his henley shirt up his arms. 

“We tidy up,” Alfred commands, taking pity on him. “Then we dust the place off, roll up the carpets and cover the furniture. We wash the windows, the walls, the floors. Then we put everything back in order.”

“Yessir.” Dick springs to attention, and from the amused tilt to Alfred’s smile Bruce wonders if he’ll start correcting Dick’s salute.

But instead Alfred simply distributes tasks between them much like a general dispensing weapons before a battle, then gets them started on the long and arduous process of trying to get Joker’s living space back in presentable shape. They start with the living room and work together to get the space ready, arranging the books on the shelves and collecting the ones that ended up carelessly abandoned on any available surface, gathering up clothes, crafts supplies, exercise sheets, torn pages scrawled over with nonsense. As Dick takes care of the books and Alfred throws the clothes into a bag to be washed and ironed, Bruce hunts for the notes, sheets and supplies.

It takes monumental effort not to peek into the pages he gathers up into his hands and try and decipher Joker’s messy handwriting or macabre doodles. Bruce doesn’t think Joker would appreciate him trying to snoop into whatever it was he’d been putting on paper over the last two years. Even so, the temptation to sneak a peek gets even stronger when Bruce opens the drawers of the desk and finds them groaning under stacks of notebooks Joker’s piled inside, all of them bulging with extra pages, dried flowers, candy wrappers.

Insight. 

It’s all here. Joker’s journals, therapy notes, key to whatever he’d been thinking over those long two years, and Joker would never know…

Bruce stuffs his load inside and shuts the drawers before the impulse gets any more distracting. He locks it all away and, after a moment’s hesitation, offers the key to Alfred, who respectfully deposits it in the breast pocket of his shirt, nodding unspoken approval as though he knows exactly what went on in Bruce’s head just now. 

“I’ll take good care of it, sir,” he promises. He hands Bruce a pair of gloves and a rag in a decisive gesture that communicates that this is all that’s going to be said about Bruce’s moment of weakness. “I’ll do the parlor,” he announces. “Master Richard, the gym, please. I’ll trust Master Bruce will handle the bedroom.”

“He’ll handle it all right,” Dicks snickers as he grabs the supplies and skips away into the gym. 

Bruce shakes his head after him. “Unbelievable.”

Alfred offers him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “Get used to it, sir,” he suggests. “There’s more where that came from.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Bruce murmurs, choosing to sound far grumpier than he actually feels, and when he’s safely out of sight in the relative peace of Joker’s bedroom, he allows himself a smile. 

If Dick’s ready to crack jokes about him and Joker, that’s — good. That’s progress. Even if the edge to his smile is still noticeably frayed. Bruce will take what he can get, which is already more than he dared hope for. 

With that, he pulls open the curtains — for some reason Joker had liked to keep them drawn in here during the day — and as the sun immediately floods the quiet, sleepy space, he gets on with the dusting, picking up Joker’s discarded clothes and other assorted mess as he goes. He does his best to stay focused on the task at hand and not let his mind drift, but in no time at all his eyes are straying to the bed, drawn to it like a moth to a flame, and do so with an inevitability that only grows stronger the harder he tries to stop himself. 

It doesn’t help that while the parlor has been aired out the bedroom door had been closed until now, trapping all the familiar Joker smells inside. His shampoo. Hand cream. A drop of coconut-scented body butter, and underneath it all, the sweet-sour smell of old dried lilac and a distant whiff of acid, always clinging just to the surface of Joker’s skin no matter how much scents and perfumes he may put on himself to cover it up.

Bruce sighs. He gives in and comes up to the bed, and rests his hand against the elegant curve of one of the wooden posts. He takes in the rumpled sheets, the dented pillows. Breathes in what’s left of Joker in the musky air. He imagines Joker buried under the sheets, blinking, pulling himself up as he rubs sleep out of his face, his eyes clearing as they fall on Bruce, his mouth tugging into a smile, _Hey there, Bats…_

In a fantasy, Bruce would sit on the edge of the bed and smile back, and Joker would tug at his cape to get him to move closer. He would crouch beside Bruce, the sheets falling off him to reveal stretches of naked white skin, and he’d reach out for the cowl. He would pull it off Bruce’s head and place it on the bed, and scoot closer, and kiss the corner of Bruce’s mouth, then the other, and Bruce would lean in and capture his mouth halfway. That would make Joker laugh into him and call him impatient, and Bruce would gather him up and bear down on him, pressing him into the bed, Joker’s legs opening up for him to trap him in the middle, and he’d be smiling up at Bruce, purring, _Go on, baby_ …

There’s been other fantasies, too. Far too many. Some of them warm with tenderness, some of them hued a violent red. They all race through Bruce’s mind now as he stares at the cold, empty bed, stirring his blood, shepherding it down to where it’s not supposed to. 

He looks to the cameras. They’re offline, the guard post standing empty now that there’s nothing to guard anymore, but he imagines it recording him anyway, and judging. 

In his fantasies, the cameras are always on and the shock bracelet stays curled around Joker’s wrist. He doesn’t want to think about what this says about him. 

Carefully, Bruce sits. The mattress sags under his weight the same way it did back when he staggered into Joker’s rooms at dawn, raw with doubt, self-hate and a desperate need for something to hold onto. He gazes at the pillows where his and Joker’s heads lay together, warm love song ghosting the skin around Bruce’s mouth, soothing the places in Bruce he’d worked so hard not to acknowledge only to have them ripped open when he was least prepared.

The temptation to lie down and seek out the remnants of that comfort grabs him hot and fierce in those same places now and he has to breathe himself through it, fighting the sudden heat in his eyes. 

Jesus, he hopes Joker is all right.

It’d be easier if he could believe that the halfway home is a good place for him, or that the time for it is right, or that he can trust the people there. That he can trust Joker _with_ the people there. But as it is, he worries, God, he worries so much and they only took Joker away _yesterday_ but — 

“Ewwwwww,” Dick’s voice echoes from the gym, stabbing right through the moment. “There’s dried blood here! Why the hell is there dried blood? You know what Bruce, never mind, don’t answer that, I don’t think I want to know.”

“Sir, are you just about done?” Alfred prompts.

“Almost,” Bruce calls out through the tight fist holding his throat in a chokehold. “I’ll dust off the bathroom too.”

The extra few minutes of privacy help him get something that’s close enough to a grip, even if the sight of Joker’s shower immediately puts him in mind of other, equally distracting memories — and when he emerges, he can face the other two with the sting in his eyes mostly cleared. 

He is then entrusted with the vacuum cleaner and runs it noisily over the vast space of the rooms while Dick and Alfred work to get the curtains down, Alfred holding the ladder and Dick carelessly balancing on it to first roll the heavy embroidered swathes of material — the same ones Joker used to climb and swing on his first days here — down the rod and then get started on the flimsier white net curtains dancing on the wind. Alfred collects them all into another bag, sends Bruce to get the sheets and the rest of the clothes Joker hasn’t taken with him and then carries the lot downstairs to put in the wash. Meanwhile, Bruce and Dick roll up the carpets and carry them out into the hall just outside.

By unspoken understanding, they leave the mats in the gym where they are, along with all the heavy equipment. Dick doesn’t ask him about the blood stains and Bruce is grateful for small mercies. In the past he might have wondered why Joker decided not to clean them after their fight.

He doesn’t have to wonder anymore.

“Has he ever used this thing?” Dick asks, running his rag over the hug machine.

Bruce sighs. “Not once. Got angry whenever I so much as brought it up.”

“Huh. Wonder why.”

“I think…” Bruce glances to the machine. “I think he probably thought that if he admitted he did need it, he’d be confessing that he really was ill. And also that I was trying to use it as an excuse not to touch him anymore.”

“Given it a lot of thought, have you?” Dick shoots him a knowing smile.

“You could say that.”

The truth is, he still doesn’t understand Joker’s violent loathing of the thing. He can only guess. But he thinks he’s right at least to some degree, and if he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t think he’d be any more positively predisposed towards the machine than Joker was if their places were reversed. No one likes to lay their insecurities out in the open, and there is just no keeping your dignity when you’re climbing to lay between a set of heavy rolling pins. For all that Joker likes to call himself a comedian, he doesn’t take it very well when the joke’s on him. 

“What are we gonna do about all the… art?” Dick asks once they get back into the parlor, pointing to the many, many doodles, poems, strings of nonsense words and other graphic mementos Joker has left behind, etched into the walls and floors in marker, crayon or — Bruce winces — scratched into the hard surfaces with what could only be Joker’s own fingernails. 

“If it were up to me,” Alfred comments, back from the laundry room, “I would wash it all off and repaint the walls for good measure. Twice. And then order an exorcism.”

“Let’s keep it,” Bruce decides.

The other two look at him as though he’s just suggested that they eat the walls instead of just cleaning them. Alfred in particular looks sad, of all things, and Bruce drops his gaze, too raw to deal with it now.

“Are you sure?” Dick prods uncertainly. “I mean it’s not exactly Banksy. Just look at this.” He crouches and squints at the nearest stretch of wall, and reads out, “ _Batty batty bat. Bat bat batty. What good are mirrors anyway? Glass on the dance floor, exploding cigar, boom. Fiddlesticks. What’s up doc. Bats ate my homework._ Five… no, six exclamation marks.” 

They’re all quiet as Dick pushes himself to stand up again, and Bruce is sure they can all hear his heart speed up in the silence. 

Dick clears his throat. He shrugs. “Never been much for avant-garde.”

“Work around it,” Bruce insists. “Just… try to ignore it. It doesn’t feel right to wash it off.”

“It’s your home, Bruce,” Alfred reminds him. “Wouldn’t you like to… reclaim it?”

“It’s my home, but those rooms are his now. He has a right to decide what stays and what goes. Until he does, the rooms should stay as they are.”

“Except cleaner?” Dick comments. Bruce nods.

“Except cleaner.”

“Very well,” Alfred surrenders with a sigh. “Shall we move on then? I will attempt to contain my cringing.”

They begin by laying protective sheets over all furniture to shield it from dust, and then once again Alfred divides them by room. Dick brings a speaker set and connects it to his phone, and plays light, upbeat music as they wash the windows, humming along like he’s determined to drive out as much of the unsettling silence as he can. Bruce appreciates it — it helps him focus on the work rather than his worry, and on the fact that he’s not in it alone.

What was it Joker said about new beginnings and feeling fresh when they were moving furniture together? Bruce thinks he can understand it a little better now. Each swipe of the cloth across the window pane makes it clearer, admits more sunlight, coaxes out the colors which used to cower in dull shades when Joker insisted on keeping the curtains closed. It definitely looks like a new beginning, and smells like one too, sharp with detergent and just a hint of hope. 

This in turn makes Bruce think about Joker’s own colors, and lilac and fireworks and red lipstick bats against white skin. He lets the memories, and his own thoughts about them, immerse him to the point where he almost doesn’t hear the music anymore and his movements become mechanical, the repetitiveness of it soothing away as much of the rawness as it will. Along with Dick’s music it carries him through cleaning the windows and the floor, and then the bathroom, and anything else Alfred puts him to until he finally decides it’s time to spread the carpets back over the floor and declares the day’s cleaning done. 

He shepherds Bruce and Dick out of the rooms before Bruce can decide to linger behind. 

“Pining won’t do anyone any good,” he tells Bruce. 

Bruce huffs. “I’m not pining.” Except he totally is.

“Except you totally are,” Dick comments.

Mercifully Alfred doesn’t join in the chorus, and instead announces, “But a nice cup of tea will. We’ve all earned it, you most of all.”

When Bruce can’t quite manage to return his smile, Alfred sighs and gently guides him past the threshold to close the heavy metal doors with a final, hollow bang. 

“He’s in good hands, Master Bruce.”

Bruce sighs. “I wish I could believe that.”

“Now, now, no more of that. Tea. And then, I believe, you have work to do.”

Dick looks to them curiously. “What work? I thought you said we were done.”

“Different kind of work. There’s things I need to prepare,” Bruce tells him cryptically. “You’ll see.”

Everyone will, soon enough. And then, Bruce imagines, more than just heads will roll. 

The least he can do is give the right people a word of warning before the storm well and truly hits.

 

***

 

“I’m sorry,” Lucius Fox says incredulously, “you want to _what_?”

Seated next to him, Selina is wearing a shocked expression that is almost identical to Lucius’s, although she’s far quicker on the uptake and snaps her mouth shut into a thin line before Lucius can so much as blink.

Bruce looks at them both in turn. “You heard me.”

“Bruce, no.” Lucius clears his throat and crosses one leg over the other, touching two fingers to his forehead in a manner of someone wondering just where in his life he’d gone wrong. There’s a vein beginning to pulse just over his left eye, and Bruce very nearly smiles when he spots it. After all these years, this vein feels like a friend. 

“Just… no,” Lucius continues, oblivious to Bruce’s attack of vein-related nostalgia. “With all due respect, I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

“Yes, I have,” Bruce corrects him patiently. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have made the offer. I’m dead serious, Lucius. My only regret is that I haven’t done it sooner.”

“You want me to be CEO of Wayne Enterprises,” Lucius enunciates, with emphasis, as though if he just says the words together loud and slow Bruce will somehow see the folly of his ways. 

Bruce smiles at him. “Yes.” He shrugs. “You’ve been CEO in all but name for ages now. It’s high time you got the title and the salary to go with the work.”

“And the office,” Selina adds, eyes twinkling. Initial surprise wearing off, she looks like she’s beginning to enjoy herself. “I bet Bruce’s is much nicer than whatever broom closet they stuck you in.”

“Very comfortable chair,” Bruce agrees. “Real leather. Mahogany desk. Liquor cabinet. You’ll probably make better use of it than I ever did.”

“Better coffee, too,” Selina adds. 

“A view of the bay.” 

“Reinforced glass, I bet?”

“Won’t budge for anything less than a bazooka.”

“This is madness,” Lucius breathes.

Bruce almost winces. _You have no idea._

“I don’t think it’s all that mad to ask the man who’s been keeping the company afloat for years to run it officially,” he says out loud. “You’ve more than earned it. You understand the company, you know it inside and out and you’ve got the clout and dedication that, frankly, I never bothered to develop. You’ve got all the qualifications and you’re just about the only person I can trust to handle it.”

If anything, this only seems to fan Lucius’s skepticism. He runs Bruce through with a look so disbelieving, so brimming with doubt that Bruce is all at once reminded of the first time he came to Lucius to ask him for a customized armored car to catch criminals at night. 

“All right,” Lucius says slowly, “what have you done?”

Bruce squirms in the chair. “Why does everyone always assume that I’ve done something?”

“No, this is absolutely a fair question,” Selina intercepts. “Mind you, it’s the right decision, too, but why would you only do this now?” 

And here it is. The billion dollar question. Bruce studies Lucius and then Selina, who’s all sharp edges now, waiting for the other shoe to drop just as much as Lucius is, curiosity naked in her narrowed green eyes. 

“I can’t give you any details right now,” Bruce starts quietly, “but I’m… All right, yes. I am, in fact, about to do something very, very stupid.”

Selina and Lucius look to one another. Selina’s eyebrow arches up, amused. “Color us shocked.”

“Not as Batman,” Bruce tells them, ignoring the jab. “This particular stupid thing, when it goes public, is going to drag my name through the mud. It’s better if it’s not attached to the company anymore when it happens.”

“Well this sounds… ominous,” Selina observes into the heavy silence that drops on them after this. “What are you gonna do, hold a press conference and tell the world all about how you spend your nights?”

“No,” Bruce sighs, “but the effect might be much the same. Or worse. The company stocks are going to take a hard hit. I’m about to become persona non grata. It’s best I step down now so it doesn’t get any worse than it has to be. And I’ll need you at the helm for that, Lucius,” he insists. “Please. You’ve guided the company through difficult times in the past. I need your experience to protect all that we’ve built.”

Selina’s eyes go wide. She’s beginning to understand, a cloud dulling the brightness in her eyes. She hisses, “Shit. Please tell me this isn’t about Tall, White and Giggly.”

Lucius’s eyes narrow. “Is it?”

Bruce sits back, letting his shoulders slump. “It… might be,” he admits, and stares hard at the fingers of his own hand. He sighs. “It is.” He makes himself look up at Lucius. “Which is why I need you for damage control.”

“Are you actually going to tell everyone you’ve been harboring him all this time?” Selina demands.

She sounds angry. Her fingers twitch where they press into her purse, like she’s itching for the weight of the metal claws, tension pulling lines around her eyes that Bruce doesn’t quite understand. 

“Eventually,” he confesses carefully, taken aback by the ferocity of her reaction. “Or I’m going to let them find out. Like I said, I can’t give you any details right now. Just a warning. It’s going to be bad.”

“How soon?” Lucius wants to know.

“I don’t know. Three months. Maybe more. Depends on when they let him out.”

“When,” Selina catches, “not if. So it’s settled? You’ve actually managed to break him?”

 _Break?_ Bruce wonders as a chill settles into his bones. 

“Not quite,” he says out loud. “But close enough that we should start planning.”

Something in Selina bristles at that and Bruce swallows, heart aching. He’s always known she hated the idea of him keeping Joker, but this? Unlike most of Gotham’s underworld, she’s never had any particular protracted beef with Joker. Why on Earth would _she_ be so mad about the chance of him getting out? 

“I’ll… think about it,” Lucius promises after a heavy moment, sounding like a man who’s just been told he has to navigate a cargo ship through an iceberg field. 

“Please,” Bruce begs him quietly. “You’re the only one I can trust to protect my family’s legacy. And it’s going to need protecting very soon.”

Lucius sighs, loud and heavy, and shakes his head. “That was a low blow, Bruce. How the hell am I supposed to say no to this?”

“You’re not,” Bruce agrees. “I know I’m asking a lot, but it’s true. I need you, Lucius.” He makes himself look at Selina again. “I need you both.”

“Right,” Selina sits tight in her chair. There’s a spark in her eyes again, but it’s of the kind that usually ends with angry red gashes across Bruce’s face. “I’m taking this as my cue. Why the hell am _I_ here, Bruce? Because I’m guessing you weren’t going to make me CEO too.”

Bruce maintains eye contact as he pleads, “I need you to take my place in the Wayne charity programs.”

For a moment, Selina just stares at him.

And then she gets up. Looking down on him, tilting her chin up, she says, “No.”

“Selina —”

“No. No way in hell are you saddling me up like some kind of beast of burden.”

 _Where the hell did that come from?_ , Bruce wonders, stunned, but Selina looks like she’s about to storm out. There’s no time to pick it apart.

“I’m only asking because I know you’re the best person to handle it,” Bruce argues. “I need someone to direct the charity team and point them towards new causes and you know the city. You know all its dark corners and more importantly, you know where the money’s needed most far better than I do. If anyone can do it…”

She turns her back on him and starts to shrug into her fashionable black coat. “No.”

“Selina.”

“Forget it,” she snaps, and stalks out of the office.

Bruce looks helplessly to Lucius. Lucius raises his eyebrows at him. 

“What are you waiting for? Go get her.”

So Bruce bolts out of the office to stalk the retreating click of Selina’s heels against polished tiles, and catches her by the elbow just as she’s about to get in the elevator. 

She tugs him inside, fierce enough to make him stumble. The door bings and closes on them. The elevator starts to move down. In the stark artificial light, the glare Selina pins on Bruce burns even starker.

Shit, she’s furious. And Bruce still has absolutely no idea what he said to set it off.

“I don’t understand,” he confesses helplessly. “I thought you’d be happy. I thought —”

“I’m not one of you,” Selina tells him coldly. 

“What?” Bruce reels. “I’m not saying you are! I just —”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Trying to turn me. Trying to make me like you. You just never learn, do you? Jesus, and I actually thought…”

She groans. She whips around to bang her frustration against the wall of the elevator. It shakes under the impact, and Bruce swallows, everything inside him seizing up against Selina’s fury. 

“I’m only asking for help,” he insists.

“No.” Selina advances on him, her perfectly manicured nails gleaming like claws. “You’re trying to recruit me, same way you always have.”

“All I’m saying is I need you to man the ship for a bit as I step down,” Bruce struggles to explain. “You were the best person I could think of for the job. You wouldn’t even be in charge if you don’t want to, I can promote my assistant director and you’d only advise her. Would that be better?”

“To cover up for whatever it is you’re trying to do with _him_ , is that right?”

 _She knows_ , is the first ice-cold impulse that jolts Bruce into something like a realization. _Christ, she knows..._

But no. She can’t. She has no reason to suspect, none, except…

Her quiet words on the rooftop, at the beginning of it all. About Joker’s obsession. 

Bruce shakes his head against the memory, ordering himself to stop being a paranoid asshole. 

“Not a cover-up,” he insists. “I told you. It’s damage control.”

“And if I say yes now, where does it end?” Selina demands. “Will you let me slip away after a while and go back to doing my own thing once the dust settles?”

“Well,” Bruce hesitates, “… yes?”

“You really don’t get it.” Selina sighs, stepping away from him. “You seriously think it’d be that easy. Well it won’t. If I do this, if I let you make me director or manager or whatever, that comes with responsibilities. Commitment. _Paperwork_. And before I know it I’ll be so bogged down in it all that I’ll miss my way out, and there’ll be no hopping off that train anymore. Because you’ll have me nice and trapped dancing to your tune and being just another obedient little soldier fighting the good fight, like you’ve always wanted me to be. Except I won’t even be with you up on the rooftops anymore — no, I’ll be a goddamn pencil-pusher. Well, let me show you exactly where you can shove that pencil, Mr Control Issues.”

“Selina, that’s not —”

The elevator comes to a halt. The door opens up onto the ground floor and Selina sweeps past Bruce in a rush of perfumed rage. 

“Wait,” he strides to keep up with her. “Let me explain. That scenario, that’s not what I meant, it’d just be for a little while until —”

“That’s the thing,” she wheels on him once they clear the revolving door and find themselves on the busy sidewalk. “It’s never _just for a little while_ with you. That’s not how you work. You have this way of pulling people in, sucking them into your orbit and warping them in your own image before they even notice what’s happening. Why do you think I broke up with you and kept my distance all this time? You were doing that to me, too. You were changing me in so many ways I couldn’t look myself in the mirror anymore. And the scary thing is that I was _okay with that_ , do you understand? Because at that point I was so desperate to make you approve of me that I was ready to throw all that I am into the wind just to have you all to myself. If I say yes now, it’ll just start happening all over again and I’m done jumping through hoops to earn your approval, Bruce. I’m done fighting you for the right to be myself.” 

Bruce stares at her, his mouth open. His thoughts are a clash of noise. She’d — He’d — 

“But the East End,” he tries. “The clinic. You —”

“I invited you to help with _my_ project,” Selina reminds him. “A project I chose. Something I want to do my own way. I asked because I — because even after everything, I hoped we could stay friends. That enough time has passed and that I could maybe give an inch, ease back into your life without springing that same damn trap on myself. But clearly I was wrong. You still don’t get it, and you’re still trying to collect me.”

“Selina…”

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them again, they glisten, pooling with tears she’s too proud to allow herself to shed, and the sight knocks the breath right out of Bruce.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m not the clown. _He_ may be desperate enough to let you break him for whatever scraps of attention you’ll throw his way, but I’m not that person anymore. I won’t be that person ever again. You can’t put all of us in a cage.”

With that, she turns and strides to the car, her driver already waiting to weave them into the traffic. She slams the door. Tinted windows instantly hide her from view, and a moment later she’s carried away, and Bruce still stands there on the pavement with his mouth open, speechless and cold and hurting.

 

***

 

He is still puzzling over Selina’s outburst when, a week later, his assistant Julie opens the door to announce, “A miss Holly Robinson here to see you, Bruce.”

He frowns. “I don’t think I —”

“She said she was sent by Selina Kyle.”

Bruce sits up, sharp and alert and, all of a sudden, ridiculously hopeful. “Please let her in.”

Julie steps aside to make way for a short, scrawny looking young woman with red hair cropped close to her face and big eyes that cast about the office in a skittish, fish out of water way as though she expects a security guard to storm in and throw her out any minute now. 

“Hi,” she says, grinning at Bruce through her unease. “You probably don’t remember me. I’m Selina’s roommate?”

Bruce does, vaguely, and puts on his big smile for her as he invites her to sit down. “What can I do for you?”

“Far as I know it’s actually the other way around,” Holly tells him, making herself relax into the visitor’s chair. “Here.” She slides an envelope towards Bruce. “I don’t know how you managed that but you pissed her off _and_ made her feel guilty all at once. I half expected her to buy a dartboard just so she could pin your picture to it.”

“That doesn’t seem like her style,” Bruce observes. 

“A lot of things don’t when you’re concerned.” Holly shrugs. “Go ahead and read the note, I don’t mind. It isn’t very long.”

Intrigued and not a little intimidated, Bruce reaches for the envelope.

Holly’s right. The note isn’t very long at all.

_I’m going to apologize for the drama, but for nothing else. I needed to say all that stuff as much as I think you needed to hear it. I’m not taking anything back._

_But I decided I still like you enough to not want to leave you alone in whatever shitstorm you’re brewing for yourself, so I’m sending Holly to interview for the job you wanted to give me. She needs a bit of direction in her life right now (don’t tell her I said that) and she’ll be perfect for it. All she needs is a bit of guidance to learn what’s what and some training in corpobabble, but she’s a fast learner, can wrangle suits with the best of them and has a lot of experience getting people to part with their money. I should know. I taught her everything she knows._

A touch of Selina’s perfume lingers over the note, just soft enough so Bruce can catch it. He skims over the note again, his jaw clenching, before he raises his eyes to Holly again.

She’s sitting there all small trying to make herself big, studying him with eyes that are sharp and perceptive and far too knowing for someone so young. Bruce puts the note away and finds a smile for her. 

“Do you know why she sent you?” he asks.

Holly shrugs again, rubbing her arm in an absent-minded way that suggests she doesn’t quite register doing it. “Yeah. Selina said you might have a job for me. Something to do with helping people. I guess I wouldn’t mind a proper job? And my girlfriend keeps saying I need to learn responsibility, so…”

The words are casual in a way that her voice tries and fails to be. When she looks to Bruce again it’s with a stubborn kind of defiance, like she’s challenging him, _Yeah, I just said girlfriend, what are you gonna do about it?_ It makes something warm and soft in Bruce come loose, and he leans toward her over the table, admiring her bravery. Wishing he could borrow some of it. 

He’ll need it in the months to come. 

“You’re from the East End, aren’t you?” he asks.

“Yeah.” Holly’s gaze turns even harder. “Got a problem with that?”

Bruce finds his smile widening as he says, “Not at all. Got a resume?”

She looks surprised for a second or two before she deflates in the chair, some of the fight eased out of her by Bruce’s complete failure to act shocked or disapproving. “I mean… kinda?” she says. “Selina helped me with it. It won’t hold up if you hit Google, but she said you won’t have a problem with that.”

“No,” Bruce agrees, “I won’t.” He buzzes his assistant. “Julie? Please ask Claire Howard over here, won’t you?”

“I think she’s in a meeting.”

“Correct,” Bruce says. “With me and Ms Robinson, in two. No excuses. Tell her to bring the onboarding folder. We’re having an interview.”

“Just like that?” Holly demands, her eyebrow raised in a way that’s all Selina.

“Just like that,” Bruce confirms. “No time like the present, right?”

“I’m not exactly dressed to impress,” Holly observes, giving a meaningful glance to her casual torn jeans and loose smiley face t-shirt. “I thought I was just supposed to give you the note and let you know I exist.”

“And you have certainly done that,” Bruce tells her, and then catches himself. “Unless you’d like some more time to prepare? We don’t have to do this right now if you don’t want to. I could schedule —”

She laughs at him, free and honest, and Bruce’s smile warms on his mouth. “You’re weird,” Holly decides, cocking her head at him. “I think I like that. It’s fine. You’re the boss, aren’t you? So if that lady doesn’t like my clothes you can just tell her to stuff it?”

“Correct, for now. Although the whole point of this interview is so I don’t have to be the boss anymore.”

Holly’s mouth opens in surprise, but if Bruce’s last remark gives her any misgivings, she doesn’t have the time to voice them. A moment later Claire Howard, Bruce’s soon-to-be chief charity administrator, marches into the office in a flurry of rushed practicality that always surrounds her, looking very much like she wants to be the one to be telling Bruce to, in Holly’s words, stuff it.

“You just pulled me out of a meeting with ACE Chemicals,” she accuses Bruce without preamble. 

“I’m sure Tom can handle it in your stead.”

“Yes, but —”

“This is Holly Robinson,” Bruce cuts in, gesturing to Holly. “I very much wanted you to meet her. She’s a friend of Selina’s and I think she’ll be a great help to us.”

“Oh?” Claire’s formidable features clear to make way for curiosity as she turns to Holly and extends a hand. “Have you come to deliver us from this here man’s folly?”

“Hey,” Bruce protests vaguely.

“Folly,” Claire repeats, unrepentant, spearing him with a glare. “You’re abandoning us with no word of explanation. There’s being eccentric, Bruce, and then there’s being careless.”

“I’m doing this for your own good,” Bruce emphasizes.

Claire rolls her eyes. “So you’ve said.” She turns to Holly, who is shooting amusing glances between them both. “He’s probably found himself a supermodel somewhere in India and wants to spend a month away with no phone calls from me,” she stage-whispers. “Don’t buy into the boy scout act. He’s tried to pull that one before.”

Holly looks at her, and then at Bruce’s own put-upon expression. Her mouth is quirking up in a way that suggests she’s trying not to laugh.

“I think,” she decides, “that I’m gonna like it here.”

 

***

 

A week later Bruce holds the press conference to announce he’s stepping down from the company and his charities, and introduces as his replacements both Lucius and the hand-picked team lead by Claire — which includes a spooked but determined Holly doing her best to put up a brave front for all the journalists. The announcement is met with about as much uproar as he’s expected, and he has to field rapid fire questions even as he tries to disappear into his car. 

Finally clear of the throng, he collapses into the backseat with a sigh that has Alfred sneaking concerned glances his way. 

“Everything tickety-boo, sir?”

“Peachy,” Bruce murmurs. “How was it?”

“Appropriately dramatic,” Alfred judges. “I particularly enjoyed the pause you made just before the main announcement. One would think you host reality shows for a living.”

“I feel like there’s an insult in there somewhere but I’m too tired to care. Can we go home now?”

“Of course, sir.” There’s that concerned glance again, through the rear view mirror. “Are you sure about this, Master Bruce? I know you think it’s the right thing to do, but…”

“It is,” Bruce insists tiredly. “When people find out I’m involved with the Joker, it’ll be hell. Protests, boycotts, mass walkouts… I have to distance myself as much as I can now so they won’t be tainted by association anymore than they’re going to be anyway.”

“If you say so, sir. However, one does wonder… Do people _have_ to find out? Wouldn’t it be prudent to try and keep the news under wraps for a while? It would, after all, collapse your entire public image…”

Bruce closes his eyes. He rests his head against the seat. “No,” he whispers. “I won’t do that to him. He’d never forgive me if I treated him like a dirty little secret.”

Alfred takes a while to give it some thought. Then he allows, “Yes, I dare say you may be right. You’re both far too proud for your own good. The hard road, then?”

“The hard road,” Bruce agrees. _All the way._

His phone buzzes with texts, missed calls and notifications all the way home. Only one of those messages is enough to engage him, and he reads it with his heart in his mouth:

_Thank you._

He stares at the text for a moment, and then writes Selina back with a _Thank_ you. _Holly’s amazing. We’ll miss you, though_ , hoping to hell he isn’t overstepping again. 

It takes Selina a long time to answer, but when she does, the relief her words bring rushes bright and light through Bruce, soothing something that’s been making it hard to breathe ever since the day she stormed away from him:

_You’re not rid of me yet._

“Good news, Master Bruce?” Alfred inquires politely. 

Bruce flashes a weary grin at his reflection in the mirror. “I haven’t fucked up completely, Alfred.”

“That is great news indeed. I think I shall bake a cake for the occasion.”

Bruce doesn’t doubt that Alfred might actually do it, too. 

He looks back to the text. Yeah, he hasn’t fucked up completely…

Even though, of course, he still isn’t quite clear on what it was he’d done to fuck up in the first place. He wants to understand Selina’s rage but it still feels like something out of the left field, which he imagines is part of the problem. 

_You can’t put all of us in a cage._

He rubs the bridge of his nose and puts the phone away, and gazes out the window just as his stomach seizes up with the same drop of chill he felt the afternoon Selina thrust the words in his face. 

And just like back then, he finally decides push the vague, untethered guilt to the side and settle on defiance instead. 

No. She wasn’t fair. That’s not what he’s doing, and he’s not _breaking_ Joker.

… Is he?

 

***

 

He never quite manages to dislodge that stubborn little morsel of doubt, not even the next morning when he grabs the packed breakfast Alfred’s prepared for him, waves him goodbye — ignoring Alfred’s tense expression as he does — jumps into the car already parked for him by the main entrance to the Manor and drives out onto the interstate.

He hates it. Hates the fact that he can’t let go of Selina’s accusations even on the road, just when he most needs his head to stay sharp and cleared of any unease that would be too obvious in his face. He’s about to see Joker for the first time in two weeks. That alone distracts him enough that he’s breaking speed limits before he remembers he isn’t driving the Batmobile and reluctantly takes it easy on the gas pedal — he really doesn’t need to be agonizing over the fact that Selina’s made Joker’s gradual recovery look like a bad thing. 

He still crosses the state line much too soon for it to be legal. He doesn’t care. He’s promised Joker that he’ll come visit as soon as he’s allowed and he isn’t about to break any promises to this man. Not now, not ever, if only he can help it.

It still feels nowhere near fast enough when he speeds past the sleepy little town at the outskirts of which the Future’s Hope Halfway Home waits, and when he finally rolls to a halt to give his name to the guard at the gate in the electric fence. Bruce doesn’t miss the admiring look the man sweeps over his car and feels ridiculously self-conscious. It’s the least flashy vehicle he could find in his garage but on these streets it still turns heads, and he imagines the inhabitants of the facility won’t take kindly to Bruce parading it around.

Ah, hell. He doesn’t have the time to worry about that. He’s here to see a woman about a clown.

He’s in the lobby depositing his phone and keys and all things metal — except for his sunglasses, which they let him keep perched over his forehead — waiting for the quiet college-age receptionist to issue him a visitor’s pass, when Dr. Angelica Harris intercepts him, coming towards him with a halo of black curls bouncing around her head, extending her hand to him. 

“Bruce,” she greets him, smiling her kind but tired smile as he takes her hand and shakes it. “How lovely to see you again. We weren’t sure you’d make it.”

Bruce frowns. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well.” Dr. Harris tucks some of the curls behind her ear. “We’ve all seen the press conference. You must be very busy, what with the transition and all…”

“Not too busy to drop by,” Bruce tells her, and punctuates it with a grin. “How is he?”

“He’s… adjusting.” Dr. Harris hesitates before inviting him to follow her out of the quiet lobby, past the electronically locked security door and down the subdued but clean corridor leading into the facility proper. “As Nisha suggested, we’re taking it slow. He spent most of the first week in his room. We only got him out for check-ups and daily therapy. This week he’s been taking his meals in the cafeteria and making use of the rec room. He had his first meeting with his social worker yesterday.”

Bruce hums along, pretending that he didn’t know that and that he hasn’t already done a thorough background check on the social worker in question. Michael Connor, age 32, single, divorced, white, born in Chicago, an ex-con who has devoted himself to reentry programs like this one since his own release seven years ago. Worked with some of Gotham’s felons in the past. Clean record. Good reputation. 

Safe. 

“Have there been any… incidents?” Bruce asks, although he’s pretty sure there haven’t been. If there were, Barbara would have notified him. 

Or so he hopes.

“None, I’m very relieved to say,” Dr. Harris confirms, and Bruce finds himself breathing a little more easily. “Naturally we were all worried but he’s settling in quite well. In fact, he already has a bit of a following.”

“Oh?” Bruce works to keep his jaw from clenching. With Joker’s charisma, he doesn’t doubt that, but Joker’s had followers — and more than that, if Dmitri is to be believed — in Arkham, too. And in Gotham. 

He just hopes Joker building himself a cult among the ex-inmates doesn’t mean what he’s afraid it might.

But then the doctor leads him into a wider, sunlit corridor, tall windows lining the walls on both sides. One side looks out into a small green courtyard with benches and flower beds and shadowed spots to sit out on the grass. The other connects to a spacious room that’s just as bright, and as soon as they get close Bruce’s heart does a leap straight into his throat. 

There’s people talking inside that room, and the voice that talks the loudest is one he’s sure he’ll recognize absolutely everywhere.

He stops and turns to look inside, listening through the rush of blood in his ears. The moment he does, what he sees instantly blows all of Selina’s accusations, all the stress and strain and worry of the last two weeks, clean out of his mind. 

There he is.

In the rec room, sitting atop a round plastic table with one knee drawn up, dressed in a loose yellow tank top and purple sweatpants. His hands are a blur of movement sketching shapes in the air, his animated face lit up with emotion as he talks, his whole body turning along with his words. Around him is a gaggle of men of all ages, ethnicities and body types, their eyes fixed on him and following his every move as though he’s a kindergarten teacher reading to those hardened, life-worn felons out of a storybook. He may as well be. Backlit in the sun pooling in from the other side, he shines, his unmistakable hair haloed gold as it sweeps over his shoulders, his mouth a wide stretch of ruby red, his nails gleaming purple, and in that moment, in this room, among those men, he looks fantastical and out of place, like a storybook character himself.

And Bruce goes soft watching him. Soft and light, mouth relaxing into a smile before he can think about it because God, he must have missed Joker more than he realized. All at once he feels every single second of those long two weeks release in him, leaving nothing but that softness and the ache that turns sweet as he puts his hand against the glass.

He’s here. He’s fine. It’s all right now.

He’s so absorbed in his relief that he nearly misses it when Dr. Harris asks him to wait, walks into the rec room and calls out to Joker. What she says is entirely lost on Bruce, but he does see Joker’s reaction — the turning of his head, the easy tilt to his smile. And then the widening of his eyes, the green in them lighting up. The softness in Bruce turns positively gooey when Joker zeroes in on him through the glass and lets his smile melt into something far too tender to bear with any sort of composure.

Some of the men in the rec room whistle and jeer as Joker slides from the table and onto the floor. He waves to them magnanimously like a king dismissing his subjects, and laughs with them, but he never lets his eyes stray from Bruce for too long as he makes his way to the door. For his part Bruce doesn’t look away from him at all, and he can’t quite control what his face is doing when Joker finally clears the glassed wall and stands in front of Bruce, bringing a rush of citrus with him. 

“Hey,” he says, eyes twinkling. “Took you long enough.”

Dr. Harris is watching, Bruce reminds himself. So are the wardens milling about in the corridor, and the men in the rec room. It’s important to remember that. 

So he doesn’t come up to Joker and sweep him into his arms the way every fiber of his body wants to.

By the softening in Joker’s eyes though, he has a feeling Joker can read this impulse in him loud and clear anyway.

“Hey,” he says back. “Bad traffic. Came as fast as I could.”

“I know you did, handsome.” Joker winks, and then turns to Dr. Harris with an expression so outrageously fake-innocent that Bruce very nearly lets out a bark of laughter. “Hey doc,” he lilts, “mind if I kidnap my Prince Charming here into the yard?”

“As long as you return him by lunchtime,” Dr. Harris allows. “Stay within sight of the cameras. We’ll come looking if you don’t.”

“We’ll be good,” Joker promises. He turns to Bruce. “Within reason. Follow me, lover boy!”

He grabs Bruce’s wrist and tugs. Bruce lets himself be led out towards the doors opening out into the gardens, and obediently trails Joker down narrow gravel paths until they arrive at a large open yard at the back of the facility where some of the residents are playing basketball on a small court by the fence.

That’s when Joker surprises him by jolting him to the side, into a shadowed nook tucked between a wall and a tall oak tree whose leaves blot out the sun.

And all at once, he’s pushing Bruce hard against the trunk. There’s hands coming to touch the sides of his face. A chilled, slender body pressing up into to his. A mouth on his cheek.

“Finally,” Joker’s voice breathes into his skin as his hair curls against Bruce’s mouth. “Got you all to myself now, baby. They can’t see us here.”

“Are you sure?” Bruce whispers, letting himself get carried away with the electric thrill of it and turning his head to press his mouth into Joker’s hair, breathing in the clean scent of soap, body butter he’s bought Joker before they took him away, and the underlying hint of acid. His arms come up Joker’s back over the tank top. 

“It’s a blind spot,” Joker tells him, moving against Bruce to tuck his face against the line of Bruce’s neck. His lips skim against Bruce’s skin but never press down into a kiss, and Bruce nearly groans with frustration as his hands glide up and down Joker’s back and sides. 

“Yeah?” he murmurs nonsensically, angling his face to breathe the word into the chilled skin of Joker’s temple. “Done your recon, have you?”

“As if I wouldn’t,” Joker giggles softly into his skin. “Silly bat.” He lifts his head again and tilts it to the side, looking into Bruce’s eyes. He’s just close enough that when he speaks next, his mouth touches Bruce’s. “Did you miss me?”

“Yeah,” Bruce breathes into his mouth, weak with just how true that is. Joker’s hand is stroking his face now while the other rests against his neck, and Bruce puts both of his hands on Joker’s hips, aching with want and warmth and everything he feels for this man all tangled up in a confusing rush. “Yeah, I did.”

Joker smiles. He leans in. And Bruce closes his eyes, allowing himself to be weak.

Except Joker doesn’t kiss his mouth, like Bruce was sure he was going to. Instead, he leans in even further and kisses Bruce’s cheek, his lips lingering only for a second or two before he pulls away.

The kiss still burns against Bruce’s skin, and he breathes out in a rush, closing his arms around Joker’s back again. 

Joker’s hand moves against his face. Metal digs into Bruce’s other cheek, and he opens his eyes.

“You said no kissing while this is on,” Joker whispers, running the cold metal of the shock bracelet over Bruce’s mouth. “Well, it’s still on, baby.”

“God, J.” Bruce brings one hand up to sneak into strands of green hair and close around the nape of Joker’s neck, squeezing tight. “Are you _trying_ to drive me crazy?”

“Always,” Joker laughs softly against him, once again letting his head rest in the crook of Bruce’s neck in a way that’s no longer teasing but painfully casual, painfully familiar and trusting and fond and God, it breaks Bruce’s heart all over again.

“Well,” Bruce murmurs into his hair, stroking the back of his neck, “if I remember it right, the actual rule was no touching at all. What happened to that, smartass?”

“Good question. What _did_ happen to it?” Joker counters. “You’re not exactly putting up much of a fight here, darling.”

“I haven’t seen you in two weeks. Under the circumstances I think I’m allowed a bit of leeway.”

“Don’t you regret that stupid rule now?”

Bruce sighs his frustration into Joker’s hair, eyes closed. “Yeah. I do.”

“Good.” Joker puts both his hands against Bruce’s chest, palms up, and pushes himself out of the tight circle of Bruce’s arms. “Come on, big boy. They’re gonna come running to check on us any minute now.”

“You bastard,” Bruce calls after him, amused and desperately aroused all at once as he stands there pressed up against the tree, the bark rough and scratchy at his back even through layers of shirt and jacket. 

He takes a moment to catch his breath and make sure he isn’t betraying anything down below before he steps out of the tree’s shadow and joins Joker on a bench facing the basketball court. They sit together in sunlight that isn’t obstructed by any skyscrapers and breathe air that doesn’t taste of grit going down, which honestly feels weird enough in itself. The fact that they’re together in a space that is in no way connected to Wayne Manor or Arkham, locked in frustrated desire, is even more difficult to wrap his head around, and some of that is slowly trickling back to Bruce’s mind now that the initial relief of seeing Joker begins to wear off.

“Wanted to bring you here as soon as I found about about this spot,” Joker tells him, smug as you please. “They call it the makeout tree around here. There’s a sign-up form and everything so everyone gets their five minutes in paradise where the cameras can’t see.”

Amused, Bruce asks, “So did you sign us up, too?”

“Nah. I just told everyone to stay away because my sweetheart is coming to visit.”

“And just like that, they obeyed.”

“Naturally.”

Bruce turns to study Joker’s profile in the sunshine. “How are you doing?” he asks quietly.

Joker smirks and looks to the ground. Hair falls over his face, long enough to brush his shoulders. “Fine,” he tells Bruce quietly. “I’m making do.”

“Did they tell you how long they’re gonna keep you here?”

“Three months if I’m good. Longer if Mullie decides she isn’t happy with my progress.”

Bruce hums his acceptance. It’s the same prognosis Nisha gave him when they were making the arrangements for the transfer. He says, “I hope you don’t like it here enough to want to stay longer than that.”

Joker’s eyes flash. He looks up to the men playing basketball, fingers tightening as they knit together in his lap. “Hardly,” he murmurs. “Three months, darling. That’s all it’s going to take, I promise you this right now.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” Bruce responds. “Don’t make me wait any longer.”

Joker turns his head to smile at him and sits a little closer. Their shoulders touch, and suddenly,despite the chilly weather, Bruce wishes he was wearing a tank top too, just so he could feel Joker’s skin against his a little longer. 

“Aren’t you cold?” he asks.

“What, you gonna keep me warm?” Joker’s eyes flash in delight. “Give me your jacket?”

Bruce smiles. “I could.”

“Nah.” Joker settles back against the bench. “It feels good sometimes, you know?”

“To be cold?”

“Mmmhmm. Stark. Crisp. Nippy.”

Bruce considers it, letting his eyes linger over Joker’s exposed arms until they snag on the shock bracelet, and that’s when he notices something that makes his heart stop cold: there’s a little bat drawn in bright red lipstick on Joker’s wrist just under it.

“What’s this?” he asks. He points to the bat. 

Joker shrugs, tilting his head back to expose the long line of his throat to the sun. “Your symbol,” he says flippantly. “What, your eyesight goes to shit by day, too? Because mine does. Which reminds me.”

He straightens up and goes for the sunglasses perched over Bruce’s forehead, then proceeds to steal them and put them over his own eyes without ceremony. He grins. “Much better.”

Bruce ignores the Great Sunglasses Theft. He trails the air over the drawing, face pulling into a tight frown. “Why?”

“The acid, probably. And genetics. I don’t think my day vision was ever much to write home about.”

“I mean this.” He touches the drawing, smudging the edge of one tiny batwing.

Joker withdraws his hand, cradling the marked wrist close to his chest and out of Bruce’s reach. “Just a piece of home,” he tells Bruce, his voice gaining a clipped edge. 

“The bracelet is a piece of home,” Bruce whispers, studying Joker’s sharp profile, now sketched in tension. 

Joker’s shoulders hunch. His fingers ghost over the sleek band of metal that’s been a constant on his wrist for two years. He scratches the skin around it, leaving a red trail that almost matches the lipstick bat in hue, and Bruce wonders with a tight ache in his stomach what his wrist is going to look like when the bracelet finally comes off.

“No,” Joker says quietly, gazing at it. “It’s a reminder.” His eyes drop to the little bat. “Maybe I needed something to remind me of other things, too. Like why I’m still wearing this thing to begin with.”

Bruce swallows. He darts a glance around to check, but the men in the basketball court are too busy with their game to pay them any attention and there is no one else in sight. 

So gently, he coaxes Joker’s hand into his own. He brings it up to his lips and kisses the little red bat, feeling a vein jump and pulse under his mouth. His finger caresses the sharp bone in the slender wrist before he surrenders it back to Joker, who lets it drop to his lap as he gazes at Bruce through the dark tinted glasses, his mouth unsmiling.

“Okay,” Bruce whispers, trying to swallow over the discomfort. “Whatever you need to get through this.”

He still doesn’t like the thought of Joker branding himself this way, any more than he did back when Joker invited him to wash his hair. Or maybe, he doesn’t _want_ to like it, because the cocktail of complicated responses he actually feels when he looks at his own symbol etched on white skin is far too unsettling to untangle now. But if Joker needs this…

Next to him, Joker tenses. He turns away from Bruce to gaze out into the court, once again shielding his wrist close. “Gee whiz, thanks, mister,” he minces. “It sure is a relief to have your blessing.”

Bruce sighs. “J.”

“What, am I being difficult again? Am I making things awkward for you?”

“I don’t want to fight,” Bruce tells him. “I just wanted to say… it’s fine. Whatever. It’s all fine.”

Joker is still tense by his side, looking like he very much does want to fight. But then he looks at his own wrist again, and then at Bruce, and something about it makes him reconsider. He slouches on the bench in a defeated way, hooking both hands to drag through his scalp, and then shakes his head, letting his fingers knit together at the back of his neck, pressing in. He breathes out. 

“You wanna know the other reason I’m wearing this bat?” he asks after a moment.

Bruce eyes him warily, expecting another minefield. “Why?”

“To let everyone here know I’m taken.” Joker smirks at Bruce. “Wouldn’t want the boys to get any ideas, now would we.”

His tone is almost aggressively casual when he says that, and if anything, that pulls the knot of dread in Bruce even tighter. “What are you saying,” he demands, immediately thinking of Arkham. “Has anyone…”

“No, dummy,” Joker sighs. “No one has. And if they do get any ideas, I’m more than capable of… dissuading them. Believe it or not, I am actually a big clown, Brucie, and I used to eat guys like that for breakfast back in Gotham. They tend to taste like rubber and bad decisions, by the way, which you of all people might just appreciate.” He giggles. “There’s this type, you know? So… thirsty for someone to latch onto. Someone with a spark and direction. They make the best henchmen if you know the right distance to keep them at. I’ll admit it does feel good to play to an audience of more than one again.”

Okay. Okay. Bruce forces himself to get that panic under control, and once he’s sure he can talk without it lacing his words, he observes, “Yeah, I’ve seen you out there. They’re just about ready to eat from your hand.”

“Yes, well.” Joker shrugs again. “I have both spark and direction aplenty. And a winsome personality to boot. What’s not to love?”

Bruce smiles at that. 

“You’re not scheming, are you?”

“Brucie, look at me.” Joker’s smirk takes on a sour tilt. “I’m a deformed freak with green hair who wears makeup in a place teeming with testosterone, frustrated machismo and anger issues. Any prison I go into, I have two choices: eat or be eaten. Simple as that.” He stretches back on the bench. “I’m not about to let any of _these_ pathetic bozos touch me, therapy or no therapy. So yes, I’m scheming. I’m scheming to show them who’s boss before they can even think of trying to show me.”

Something about his tone makes Bruce sit up and study him with new eyes, reading into the tightness around Joker’s mouth. 

“J.” he whispers. “You didn’t… do anything, did you?”

Joker’s response is an ugly sort of laughter as he throws his head back again, tilting it to look at Bruce sideways. “Nope,” he says easily. “But let’s just say I made sure the charming populace here learned that picking on me isn’t going to end well.”

“What happened?” Bruce presses.

“I didn’t kill, maim, dismember, shoot, cut or hit anyone,” Joker tells him. “Nor did I drown anyone in the toilet, bash anyone’s head against any flat surfaces, or choke them.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“Tough break, Buster. That’s all you’re going to learn.” Joker draws one knee up to rest his arm on it, turning to watch the basketball game. “Like I said, you’re just going to have to learn to trust me.”

“You can’t want me to trust you,” Bruce says slowly, “and then warn me not to underestimate you at the same time.”

“Of course I can. And you shouldn’t.”

“These two cancel each other out. I can’t —”

“Find a way,” Joker tells him sharply. “I don’t care how. I’m out of your fancy little prison now, cupcake, and you gotta accept that and let the leash loose a little.” 

_You can’t put all of us in a cage._

The echo of those words makes Bruce study Joker even more closely. With an aching heart he catalogs each tense line in his body, each twitch of his fingers, the way Joker bites down on his bottom lip, worrying some of the lipstick off. 

“J.,” he asks quietly, “are you… all right? You’re not changing your mind, are you?”

_Am I breaking you?_

Joker is silent for a long time, turning his head to regard Bruce in return. With the sunglasses in the way Bruce can’t read anything in his eyes, so he sits tight and tries to find his cues in the rest of Joker’s body, which, as if to spite, him remains defiantly still.

Finally though, Joker’s mouth curves up again at one corner. His forehead smooths out of the lines marking it a second ago. He lets his leg drop back down to the ground, opening himself up. 

“Oh darling,” he says softly, “no. Not that. We’re far too close for me to be getting cold feet now, aren’t we? Just look at where I am. Uncuffed, no straitjacket, about to get leave to go out on the town in two weeks. Three months, remember? I promised you three months. I’m a man of my word, Mr. Wayne.”

Bruce lets out a long exhale and tries to smile back. It doesn’t quite make it onto his face. “I hope so,” he whispers.

Instead of replying Joker’s hand finds its way down onto the bench and over Bruce’s, and Bruce moves his own up to squeeze back. The metal of the bracelet digs into his skin. He looks down at their joined hands, and so does Joker, his index finger beginning to sketch idle patterns over Bruce’s skin. 

Then the ball suddenly bounces past them and into the wall of the facility, and the men from the court start calling to them to throw it back, which brings the fragile moment crashing down around them both. Joker squeezes Bruce’s hand once in a way that’s almost apologetic before he launches himself over the bench and after the ball, which he grabs and tosses back to his fellow residents with a jovial “Here ya go, gents, and fare ye well on this most noblest of pursuits, this astounding display of athletic prowess, this blessed all-American pastime! We are all elevated by the sight of your exertions! By all means, carry on delighting us in the name of the Blessed Lady Liberty!”

The men seem confused as they thank him, some of them chuckling, some shaking their heads. They’re still on a learning curve when it comes to Joker, not quite knowing what to make of him with all his grand, bizarre ways, and watching them react, Bruce finds it’s getting somewhat easier to see him in this odd little halfway space. It does feel wrong in small, uncomfortable ways to have him reside in a place that’s so… drab, so unremarkable, so _normal_ , when where he truly belongs is anything but. Inevitably, this once again makes Bruce think of cages and washed out colors and breaking.

But… 

This is only temporary. Joker won’t stay here for much longer, and then he’ll be back in his proper world, by Bruce’s side this time around instead of facing him from across the barricade. And maybe he’s right. Maybe Bruce really ought to let him survive here by his own rules, even as he’s bending Bruce’s in the process. 

Difficult as this is to consider.

They don’t get much time together after this interruption before an old-fashioned school bell shrieks through the air to summon the inmates to lunch. Joker gets to his feet first and offers Bruce a hand to pull him up, and Bruce takes it.

Before they can tread the path back into the building though, Bruce makes a snap decision. He grabs Joker’s wrist and pulls him behind the oak tree, where he hugs him close and presses his mouth to Joker’s temple. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m trying. I’m going to do better. Please don’t give me any more reasons to doubt you.”

“But darling,” Joker whispers back, finger doodling over Bruce’s shirt, “how can I not? You’re so beautiful when you wrestle with things you don’t understand.” He hooks his fingers under Bruce’s jaw and brings his face close enough to kiss his chin, and then the corner of Bruce’s mouth. “I just can’t resist.”

He lifts the sunglasses then, and when Bruce looks into his eyes he finds them bright, glistening with something that looks too much like sadness. Before he can react Joker is stepping away from him, and gently taking the sunglasses off to tuck them into the breast pocket of Bruce’s shirt. 

“Here,” he says, reaching into the pocket of his own sweatpants. He pulls out a pack of wet wipes, selects one and starts to apply it to Bruce’s face. 

“What —”

“My kisses tend to leave a mark.” There’s a trace of amusement stealing into his voice as he works. “Better that they don’t see it or they won’t let you in again next week, Casanova.” 

Bruce breathes out and surrenders to his surprisingly gentle ministrations, and fondly, he thinks, _Dammit_. He should have known. Joker probably let him sit there wearing his lipstick marks out in the sun all this time, and God only knows what the basketball players made of the pair of them. 

Not that it bothers Bruce too much. Everyone is going to know the truth soon enough — it’s good to lay the groundwork early. 

And then Joker hides the wipes again and puts even more distance between them, and steps out of the shadow of the oak. 

“Come on,” he coaxes, glancing at Bruce over his shoulder. He’s smiling, and the smile looks just as sad as his eyes do. “Today’s spaghetti day. I can’t let them steal all the meatballs.”

Bruce wants to say something. Promise something, maybe. Anything to spell some of that sadness away.

But he has no idea where he’d even start, so in the end all he says as he’s led by the hand through the garden again is, “Three months, J. And then it’ll be better.”

“Three months,” Joker echoes, sounding thoughtful and dark in a way that Bruce knows he’ll be trying to puzzle out for the rest of the day but that he’s too much of a coward to confront right now.

So he keeps his mouth shut. And lets Joker drop his hand the moment they get inside.

 

***

 

He has no idea what to expect when he comes to visit again next week. More sad eyes, probably, and sadder smiles, and sharp-edged words meant to hurt, and guilt.

So it’s the best kind of surprise when Joker all but manhandles him under the oak tree, where he proceeds to kiss his face everywhere except the mouth in a change of mood so sudden it gives Bruce whiplash.

Joker spends the rest of the visit hugging Bruce’s arm on the bench and whispering hot, _filthy_ promises of all the things they’ll do together when he gets out. His voice is warm, lust-thick, and tickles far too close to Bruce’s ear as each heated word trickles into it like drops of syrup. Bruce barely gets a word in edgewise, and that word is mostly “God” and “J.” and “Fuck” in different combinations because Batman or not, at the end of the day he is only a man and he dares anyone to stay coherent in the face of a horny Joker describing in excruciating detail how he’s going to suck his cock dry.

By the time he has to leave he needs to shut himself in the guest toilet to spend one of the least dignified moments of his life taking care of the hard-on he’s been sporting from the moment his back hit the tree trunk.

That day he arrives home with his mind an arrow of bright-hot purpose, and when he finds Alfred, he gathers up all the mulish determination that drives him on each case to propel him right through the awkwardness and ask “I need you to order me some books.”

“What will it be this time, sir?” Alfred asks, preparing a strawberry milkshake. “I believe you already owe every single criminology title of value under the sun.” 

“Not work-related this time,” Bruce manages. He gives himself a moment to burn in embarrassment, and then regroups. “I need books about. Men. And…” _Oh God_. “And how to sleep with men.”

“Ah.” Alfred’s face remains expertly still, even though a twinkle in his eyes betrays him. “I see.” He turns back to the milkshake, which conveniently hides his face from Bruce.

He’s trying not to laugh, Bruce realizes, and contemplates the benefits of running down into the cave, shutting himself there and never, ever coming out.

It’d be no use. Alfred would probably find a way to get down there to ply Bruce with cups of chamomile and breakfast croissants with a healthy side of sass no matter what kind of locks Bruce puts in his way. He’s just that kind of man. 

Bruce collapses into one of the kitchen chairs and hides his face in his hands, breathing out. “I’ve never done it before,” he says by way of explanation, or maybe defense. “You know that. And he’s…” He blushes, remembering some of the scenarios Joker made him imagine earlier today. God, he’s going to need a freezing cold shower. Or make it ten.

“I need to know what I’m doing,” he manages.

“Naturally,” Alfred agrees in a strained voice that tells Bruce he’s still far too amused. “It’s always good to be prepared.”

“Yes,” Bruce agrees. He sighs. “Go ahead, laugh it out. I won’t mind.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir,” Alfred assures him, finally turning back to Bruce as he leans against the cupboards. “So. Books, then? Would you also like some… visual aids to go with them? I could recommend a title or two.”

Bruce’s jaw all but hits the floor. “Alfred,” he says very, very slowly. “You didn’t just suggest you’d recommend me porn, did you?”

“Only in jest, Master Bruce.” Alfred’s polite smile turns into a smirk. “Unless you want me to.”

“Oh God.”

“Though I’m positive you’ll be able to find suitable material on your own,” Alfred decides. “Of course I’ll be happy to compile some textbooks for you. Even so, wouldn’t it be easier to just… ask me?”

“No,” Bruce tells him decisively. “I don’t know if I could deal with getting the Talk from you at my age. I’m already dying from embarrassment here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I noticed,” Alfred comments, still enjoying himself immensely at Bruce’s expense. 

“I’ll do my reading,” Bruce declares stubbornly, “and then maybe come to you if I have any questions. Okay?”

“As you wish, sir.” 

“Right.” Bruce gets up. “Right. Good talk.”

He doesn’t quite run on his way out of the kitchen, but it’s a near thing. 

 

***

 

The books arrive the next evening. Bruce makes himself wait until he comes back from patrol and gets some sleep before locking himself up with them, knowing that he’d be all but useless as Batman with gay sex trivia bouncing around in his head. 

As soon as he wakes up the next morning though he locks the bedroom door and turns the bed into a reading fort, and launches himself into his new education the way he launches himself into every new piece of information that’s going to be useful to him.

He’s the goddamn Batman. He _will_ be prepared for every eventuality, and these days that includes satisfying the Joker in bed.

Because this is his life now.

Dwelling on the absurdity of his current situation is counterproductive, so Bruce doesn’t. Instead he keeps Joker’s whispered promises at the back of his mind as he focuses on the books with all their new insight, and does everything he can to approach it the same way he approaches everything else: with clear, analytical mind focused on practical application.

Except practical application in this case makes him think of Joker spreadeagled for him on this very same bed, which, needless to say, does fuck-all to help his concentration.

His stirring libido notwithstanding, the books fascinate and in many ways surprise him. He’s been aware of some of it before, like practicing safety, which he has always made a point to prioritize no matter what kind of activity he’s engaged in. But the fact that anal sex can be so pleasurable for men is something he has a hard time believing. At one point he tries to imagine himself being on the receiving end of it, with Joker, and his mind shuts down in white-blind panic at the very idea, his stomach twisting up in queasy knots he needs to breathe himself through to ease. 

He isn’t ready for that. Trusting Joker with his own body to this degree? No. Not now, and maybe not ever. And not just with Joker — he doesn’t think he’d trust Selina with that kind of intimacy, or any of his other lovers, and none of _them_ had a history of being a reckless serial killer known for his general disregard for other people’s safety. 

But maybe Joker doesn’t expect that from him, if what he’s told Bruce the other day is any indication. None of his fantasies included that particular scenario. It’s a comfort to remember, and Bruce tells himself that after all, Joker does know him. He probably expects that Bruce will have certain… limits.

Whether or not he’ll respect them is another matter, but Bruce doesn’t want to think about that possibility just now. It’d mean that they’d have to rethink the whole idea of a relationship and what they expect one to entail, and it’s far too early for that. There’ll be time to draw new lines in the sand, and to struggle over them if need be. 

This makes him wonder if Joker has any limits of his own, but that’s a dangerous avenue to pursue and at the end of it, the shadow of Arkham looms tall and stark and cold. 

They have time to learn those things about one another. Slowly, if they have to. Little by little, just like they’ve been figuring out everything else.

And in the meantime, Bruce reads about lubes and condoms and the importance of foreplay, and how to find and stimulate the prostate, and different erogenous zones on the male body, and positions and codes and techniques, and tries his damnedest not to get distracted by imagining himself and Joker in everything he reads about.

He is about 50% successful.

And when he’s done reading, he ventures down to the cave, fires up the computer and digs his way into the Joker tapes.

He watches Joker pleasure himself, and then plays it again when he’s sure he can watch it without needing to unbutton his own pants and join in. He pays careful attention to the way Joker’s fingers move inside his body. The angle, the pace, the technique. He watches it two more times and memorizes it all, and then returns upstairs to read some more.

And very decisively does not acknowledge Alfred’s amused smirk as he goes.

 

***

 

The next time he comes visit, though, once again he is faced with a drastic change of mood. Dr. Harris doesn’t smile when she leads him to Joker.

“We had an accident,” she explains when Bruce asks, tasting tension in the air. “One of the men was found at the bottom of the stairs with both his legs broken.”

Bruce’s blood runs cold. “Do you know what happened?”

“He said he tripped going out for a snack.” Dr. Harris sighs. “We don’t have surveillance on it. It happened in one of the blind spots.”

Well, shit.

“I didn’t do it,” Joker tells Bruce by way of hello, stretching out on the bench. He hasn’t moved to suggest that he might want to bring Bruce behind the oak tree again, and isn’t looking at him. 

Well. Talk about blowing hot and cold. 

Bruce sits down beside him and starts, “I wasn’t —”

“Yes you were,” Joker parries. “You’ve got your Judgy McJudge face on. Well, I’m telling you right now I never touched the guy so you can put that guilt trip back where it came from.”

Bruce studies him. “What are you not telling me?”

“At any given moment? Plenty. About poor old Chris and his unfortunate but impressively dramatic pratfall? Nothing that should concern you.”

Bruce’s frown turns stony. “J.”

“Bruce,” Joker echoes, in a much whinier voice. “I can do you a pinkie swear if that’ll put your mind at ease. It wasn’t me. I didn’t push him.”

Bruce thinks about that, and about all the things that sentence leaves out.

Very slowly, he asks, “Did you say anything to him?”

Joker studies his own nails, looking about as interested in the conversation as he is in the pigeons pecking the ground near the court. “I’m sure I did, at one point or another. Hello. Goodnight. Pass the ketchup.” His eyes narrow. “If I ever catch you badmouthing me or my boyfriend again you’ll find just how many interesting things a plastic fork can do. Perfectly ordinary normal people small talk like that.”

_If I ever —_

Bruce freezes on the bench, feeling like he’s just been slapped. “Joker.”

Joker shrugs and flicks an invisible speck of lint off his sweatpants. “I didn’t push him. He did that all on his own.”

“Did you have anyone else push him?”

“Didn’t have to.” Joker’s eyes gleam with savage pleasure as he finally pins them on Bruce. “A few choice words of warning and he must have decided that he prefers to spend the next month or so in the infirmary. Smart of him, I must say. I expected more in the way of misguided muscle flexing and all those other boring things little men like him tend to do when they perceive a threat to their manhood, but making a _literal_ threat to his manhood worked wonders. Even I was surprised by the lengths he went to to atone.” He relaxes on the bench, the corner of his mouth tugging into something cruel. “Turns out I do still have some clout with the big boys, eh?”

“Oh God, Joker.” Bruce squeezes his temples, mind racing a mile a minute. “You can’t _do_ that. You can’t just —”

“Defend myself?” Joker challenges. “Would you rather I let them insult you? Would you rather I just nodded along as they call me such delightful things as ‘faggot’ or ‘fairy’ or ‘cocksucker’? Of course, I am all of those things,” Joker adds before Bruce can react, once again casually inspecting his nails. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to allow blatant disrespect. Now before you start clutching those pearls, let me reiterate that I did not say anything to him that you don’t hear in this place every single day. I never told him to throw himself down some stairs. It was his choice to interpret my ultimatum as he pleased.”

Jesus Christ. Bruce stares at him with blood rushing from his face, and he wants to scream. This. This is exactly what he’d been afraid of. And now… 

“Don’t do that again,” Bruce orders, and by some miracle manages to keep his voice low. “I mean it, Joker. This counts as breaking the rules.”

“Does it really?” Joker regards him with studied curiosity and not a hint of remorse. “Good to know. I’ll make sure to be more subtle next time. Would that satisfy your sensibilities, or should I just go ahead and lie down on the ground with a sign that says ‘Go ahead and step on me’?”

“Joker —”

“The clumsy fellow didn’t die, did he? He’ll be fine in a couple of months, and will have learned a valuable lesson or two. The question is, what are you going to do now, Brucie?” Joker’s eyes are arctic-cold and cruelly calculating as they study him. “I’m curious. What will you do now that you think I’ve broken the rules?”

Nothing. Bruce can do absolutely nothing, not anymore, and they both know this perfectly well. In the end, he leaves in frustrated impotence, because Joker’s right in that the man didn’t die and claims it was an accident and with his access to surveillance cut off Bruce has no way to know exactly what Joker did or didn’t say to him. He only has the knowledge that Joker was somehow involved and might have been the cause of it, but that’s the thing — the _might have_.

The fact that with Joker the _might_ is just as good as _did_ is of little consequence when the only punishment would be to take him back to the Manor, and that is no longer his call to make.

It’s Dr. Mulligan’s. And Bruce could tell her about this conversation, if not for the certainty that she already knows. Will she decide to punish Joker like this for something they can’t even prove he did, and that, if his word is to be believed, he only has a tenuous connection to?

And that’s the thing. If his word is to be believed. 

Bruce still isn’t sure of that, and as he drives back home, he thinks that this is precisely what Joker wanted to show him. 

The depth of his own distrust. 

That, or Joker really is going stir-crazy in there, and God, the sooner he’s out of that place and back in Bruce’s care the better…

Except that means that he’ll be loose in the Manor, free to come and go as he pleases.

Can Bruce trust him with _that_?

 

***

 

Things come to a head five days later when Oracle catches him in the middle of patrol to report, “The clown is missing.”

“What?” Bruce demands, all blood draining from his face. 

“He’s nowhere in the facility. He’s gone. And so are a few of the other inmates. There’s an hour missing from the surveillance records. They bolted.” 

Her voice is flat when she says it, and almost lacks inflection. Almost. What little there is is enough to make the hairs on the back of Bruce’s neck stand on end. 

_Serves you right for believing this wouldn’t happen, idiot._

She kills the connection then, and Bruce is glad. There’s nothing to be said and he doesn’t have any space in his head right now to consider Barbara’s dark vindication. 

He’s too busy swearing and sweating fear by the buckets all the way to the halfway home, where he arrives in record time.

_God, J., what have you done?_

He finds the place on high alert and lockdown, with two-thirds of the guards missing, probably in pursuit. Nisha and Dr. Harris are sitting together in the director’s office, both nursing mugs of black coffee and looking like they haven’t slept for a year. 

Bruce doesn’t need to ask for surveillance records. They offer it to him freely, but it only proves Barbara’s statement — there’s about an hour missing, meaning that someone must have found a way to cut the wires.

Bruce has a pretty good idea who that might have been.

_Shit._

“Nine men missing,” Dr. Mulligan explains as Bruce stalks through the facility. “So’s Angie’s security pass and her car. Someone broke into her office and grabbed the pass and the keys. We don’t know how they got past the guard post, but there were no signs of struggle. The guard himself is missing.”

“Have you checked the perimeter?” Bruce barks as she opens Joker’s room for him. 

“Yes. We found no bodies, if that’s what you mean.” 

“Keep looking,” Bruce decides, already prepared for the worst. “If they attacked the guard they may have dumped the body somewhere on the way.”

“We have people searching the area.”

“Good. Now —” He stops dead in his tracks, and swears so loudly that next to him Dr. Mulligan jumps in surprise.

God, the bracelet. Joker must still have it on. Bruce is a fucking _idiot_.

Fast as he can he turns on his heel and stalks back out through the facility towards the nearest exit and then the car, activating the comm in his ear. 

“Alfred,” he barks into it as he gets back into the car. “Activate the locator in the bracelet. We’ve got code purple.”

“Right away, sir.” Alfred’s voice is crisp and tight and to the point, and Bruce is grateful that no comments follow. 

He thinks he might actually start screaming otherwise.

 _Why. Why. Why the fuck would he —_

The signal from the bracelet comes on just in time to stop Bruce from crushing his own steering wheel beneath his grip, and Bruce magnifies the coordinates on his dashboard screen, starting the engine. 

And then, through the hurt and fury, he actually realizes what those coordinates are, and blinks, not understanding. The signal from the bracelet is a glaring red dot moving on the map, but… isn’t it moving towards…

No. This doesn’t make any sense. He can’t be —

Bruce’s eyes snap up to the road.

Sure enough, there’s a car approaching from around the bend. Very obviously so. Whoever is in it has made no attempt to be stealthy, and instead is blaring loud 80’s rock music so loud Bruce can hear it from where he’s parked by the doors to the lobby. He looks to his phone again. The red tracking signal from the bracelet confirms it.

Joker.

The car — an old tulip-red chevy pickup — is in no hurry as it rolls up to the gate at a leisurely pace, bouncing with the weight of the men piled in a happy huddle in the back. They’re all singing along to the music, loud enough to rival the ear-splitting volume of the radio. Bruce only needs one glance at the group to spot Joker among them, standing up, waving his hands like a conductor as he grins and directs his fellow inmates through the chorus of _Livin’ on a Prayer_. On his wrist, the bracelet blinks in red, but he doesn’t seem perturbed by that.

He has a slice of pizza in one hand, dripping cheese. And he’s not the only one.

What the _hell_ — 

Bruce’s heart stops when a figure gets out of the driver’s cab and uses a security pass to open the gates, then climbs back into the car, pleased as pudding as he slowly brings the all-singing, all-bouncing chevy up the driveway, wailing along with the group with the window rolled down. 

Bruce recognizes him. It’s the missing security guard. 

“Batsy!” Joker calls in glee, dropping his slice of pizza and swinging his long legs over the walls of the truck to launch himself into a full sprint before it’s even pulled to a stop; he outraces it in a blink and drapes himself over the hood of Bruce’s car, where he makes himself comfortable on his stomach, rocking his legs back and forth. He’s wearing a fur-lined leather jacket that is far too big on him, unzipped to show that there’s nothing but planes of naked white skin underneath, and Batman-print pajama pants that he got God knows where, and the scarf and hat he got from Bruce for Christmas. His feet are bare. Just below the bracelet, Bruce spies the lipstick bat, still there but smudged into a mass of red. 

“So good of you to join us,” Joker sings with a nasty spark in his eyes. “We were just having ourselves a little pizza party. Ain’t that right, gents?” 

His call is answered by what sounds like nine happy male voices — eight escapees and the hapless guard — raised in a hurrah, and Joker laughs, saluting them with a hand that still glares red. Then he turns back to Bruce and smirks the way he used to back on Gotham’s rooftops. His eyes say it all.

 _Whatcha gonna do about it?_

Bruce gets out of the car and slams the door in his wake, loudly. He stalks over to Joker just as guards and doctors troop out of the lobby and swarm the driveway, their faces a mixture of puzzled and pissed in equal amounts. 

“What the hell,” Bruce hisses, towering over Joker, “do you think you’re doing?”

Joker shrugs. He lays himself down on the hood of the car and swings his legs, grinning up at Bruce. 

“I told you,” he explains in angelic tones. “We went out to get some pizza.”

“In the middle of the night.”

“Yup.”

“In a _stolen car_.”

“Which we brought back safe and sound. We even gave it a wash!”

“You know full well that you’re on a curfew here.”

Joker doesn’t seem impressed. “Curfew schmurfew. The guys deserved a bit of fun. Am I right, fellas?”

Once again the statement is punctuated by an enthusiastic chorus, which is cut short when Dr. Harris approaches the back of the truck. 

“All right, everyone out,” she commands in a voice that leaves no room for argument. “I’m putting all of you on janitor duty starting tomorrow. That includes you, Joker,” she adds, glaring at the unrepentant clown still draped over Bruce’s car. “Was it your idea?”

“It was more of a communal impulse, Doc,” Joker explains easily, sitting up. “The boys were getting the jitters. I merely provided the proverbial spark.” He snaps his fingers to illustrate, smiling like a cat who learned how to operate the tin opener.

“I’m sure you did,” Dr. Mulligan comments tiredly, stopping beside Bruce. She, too, is glaring at Joker, but they all might as well be glaring at the car itself for all the impression it leaves on their target. “What exactly were you trying to prove here?”

“What, can’t a clown have a nice night out with his pals?” 

“Not when he’s on strict probation he can’t,” Dr. Mulligan presses while behind them, the men are slowly stumbling out of the truck, the passengers and driver alike. They all look flushed and exhilarated but curiously not intoxicated, and there are no empty bottles, cans, needles or joints littering the back of the truck. Just empty pizza boxes and crumbs, and bits of topping squashed under careless boots.

The compromised guard follows the inmates inside without being prompted. From his slowly sinking face, he must be in the process of realizing just how much shit he’s gotten himself into, and if Bruce was any less angry and scared he’d be amazed. What did it take to convince the guy to not only let them all out, but to drive the truck for them? How the hell had Joker done it?

“Where did you get the money?” Dr. Mulligan demands.

“Dougie had some. He decided to treat us.”

“And my car? Was it you who broke into my office?” Dr. Harris joins them. 

Joker makes a zipping motion over his mouth. “That’d be telling.”

“Joker.”

“We were only borrowing it,” he insists. “And we brought it back in one piece, didn’t we?”

He looks at Bruce when he says it, and his eyes flash with layers of challenge. 

_I came back, didn’t I?_

God, Bruce wants to punch him. 

“Inside,” Dr. Mulligan commands, massaging her forehead, looking between Joker and Bruce. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow. You’re getting the sleeping pills tonight, Joker.”

“Sure thing, Doc,” Joker twitters agreeably enough, sliding off the car and to his feet. “Looking forward to sleeping like a baby. Just let me return this jacket to Stevie, he was kind enough to lend it to me.”

“Tomorrow,” Dr. Mulligan snaps. “I’ve had just about as much of you today as I can take. Get in the building.”

Joker nods, meek as you please, and doesn’t protest when one of the guards comes up to him and pushes him towards the door. He does look at Bruce over his shoulder as he’s marched up the stairs. 

He’s smiling, and his eyes are cold. 

“I was afraid he might pull something like this,” Nisha whispers to Bruce when Dr. Harris follows the little procession up the stairs and into the facility, leaving the two of them alone on the now-quiet driveway.

“Do you think he’s regressing?” Bruce asks quietly, not bothering to restrain the tension in his voice.

The question is bittersweet on his tongue, laced with hurt, betrayal and then something else besides.

Something that he’ll need to think about later, no matter how much he doesn’t want to.

Hope.

Because regressing means that things would go back to normal. Or to what had been normal just over a month ago, in any case. Joker back in the Manor, where Bruce can keep an eye on him and rest easy with the knowledge that he’ll be there every day, waiting for Bruce, safe and contained and not playing havoc with anything more volatile than a set of crayons. In so many ways, that would be so much easier.

Easier than trusting Joker to keep his word. 

Dr. Mulligan takes a moment to answer, tucking her hands into the pockets of her jacket against the chill. 

“No,” she decides. “He’s just trying to prove something. To you, probably, as much as to himself.”

Yeah. Bruce gathered as much. That doesn’t make it any better.

“Still think he’s safe enough to be kept here?”

“I never thought that,” Dr. Mulligan corrects him. “He’ll never be one hundred percent safe anywhere. That’s not how it works.”

Bruce looks at her, and she sighs, letting her eyes drop to the gravel.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she says quietly. “He _has_ made progress. He’s been learning to control his impulses and to find coping mechanisms, outlets and behavior patterns that don’t involve violence. But that’s about as much as we can do for him — there’s no way to eradicate the impulses themselves. We can’t inject a conscience where there’s never been one. There are no pills for empathy or moral judgment. His kind of psychosis, the way he looks at the world… those can’t be changed. Only managed. And he’s allowing us to manage him only for as long as he thinks it’s worth it.”

A chill runs through Bruce that has nothing to do with the nightly air, and he looks back to the facility, jaw pulsing. Logically he’s known all this, but…

“Is there any hope?” he finds himself asking, and beside him, Nisha is sighing again.

“If there wasn’t, he wouldn’t be here,” she points out. “He’s as ready now as he’ll ever be. But he’ll never be completely cured, and I think tonight was his way of reminding everyone of that. Including himself.”

Bruce looks at the building, where, little by little, the lights are beginning to wink out, the night’s excitement over. Silence is settling over the grounds, frayed but slowly stitching itself into something resembling peace. 

“I’m going back in,” Nisha decides, shivering. “I don’t even want to think about all the paperwork we’re going to have to fill out after tonight. Poor Angie is going to have state inspectors riding her back. I’m assuming you’re going back to Gotham?”

“Yes,” Bruce murmurs. 

“Right.” The doctor lingers for another moment, and Bruce feels her keen gaze on him.

“This isn’t a setback,” she says after a moment, “nor is it failure. Don’t take it as one. It’s just a reminder. Remember, he’s come this far, and he’s scared.”

Bruce stares at her. “Scared.”

“Yes, scared. Of becoming ordinary. Which I think you understand well enough.” When Bruce doesn’t respond, she sighs and adds, “As far as we know, no one got hurt tonight. That’s got to count for something.”

Ah yes. They still need to find out about that, don’t they? Bruce hopes to all that’s holy that she’s right.

“Goodnight, doctor,” he says, and she nods, and starts on her way back to the facility.

Bruce stands there a few moments longer, waiting as the last of the lights go out. 

Then he stalks around the premises until he stands under the window he knows belongs to Joker’s room.

Sure enough, Joker is there. Looking out, waiting for him and smiling that same tight, cruel smile, a white, ghost-like shadow with a metal band on his wrist that’s still blinking at regular intervals that Bruce can’t help but measure out.

One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three.

When Joker spots Bruce, he sketches a heart on the window pane and blows him a kiss. Then he turns away and disappears into the darkness, leaving Bruce with an afterimage of his white skin and acid eyes and the little red light glaring into the night.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter than the last one this time, for better or worse, but it's one in which the rating becomes relevant again so...
> 
> Happy Pride month ;)

He sits across from them, his hands folded together, his hair coiffed and combed to fall in graceful curls down the left side of his face. He’s wearing black today, aside from the dark plum shirt underneath and the lavender gloves on his hands, and the dark colors bring out the unnatural whiteness of his skin even more than the purple suits did. 

His eyes are fixed on Bruce, and he’s smiling.

He’s the only one who is.

“The patient, henceforth referred to as John Doe,” the Judge reads out in a tight, clipped voice that nevertheless booms across the near-empty courtroom, “will be granted probationary release under the following conditions.” 

Weekly sessions with his psychiatrist, social worker and parole officer, Bruce recites along in his head, watching Joker’s smile. Taking all his prescribed medicine. All correspondence read and censored. One state-issued mobile phone permitted, with all his calls, texts and other activity recorded and surveyed. State-issued laptop, likewise with all his activity monitored. Reparations to the city and individual victims and their families, as agreed upon in further proceedings. Gainful employment within five months of initial release, and only after obtaining a license to work. Ban on leaving city limits unless cleared to do so with appropriate authorities. Ban on wielding weapons, including sharp knives, and toxic chemicals. Lifetime ban on purchasing firearms. Curfew within the first year of probation. Any public outings must be conducted in the company of a designated chaperon until declared otherwise. No voting rights, and a ban on obtaining a driver’s license for at least a year, more bans, more restrictions… 

And the shock bracelet, upgraded to at all times transmit his location to a designated GCPD team — who have been equipped with duplicates of the remote — must be worn when out in public, and may be only taken off at home.

Home, meaning Wayne Manor. It’s already been entered into Joker’s documentation as Joker’s place of residence up until he decides otherwise. His eyes gleam when the judge reads that part, and he winks at Bruce, who does his best to keep his face still.

He fought them on the bracelet. He did the best he could. But the final verdict is a compromise born out of four other hearings and far too many hours of debates behind closed doors, debates he’s been entitled to participate in due to his seat on the Arkham board but in which, because of his close involvement in the entire thing, he could not vote. They insisted, and ultimately gave him a choice: the bracelet or the brain chip that is currently being tested both at Arkham and the Slab.

In the end, as Dr. Mulligan pointed out to him in the corridor during a break between sessions, at least the bracelet _can_ be taken off. 

So he relented, and sat quietly through the fourth and final vote during which the motion only passed by a narrow margin, but…

It did pass.

And so here they are. All the arguments made. All the legalities considered, and then considered again. All the testimonies heard, all the experts consulted, all the precautions taken. All other avenues exhausted. All alternatives hollow and, at this point, impossible.

They’ve done it. 

“Failure to comply with these conditions will constitute the violation of parole and result in immediate arrest,” the Judge is reading, eyes fixed on the text in front of her. “Any infraction, however small, will be regarded as violation of parole and likewise result in imprisonment. The conditions of probationary release will be subject to review and re-negotiation one year hence, pending the patient’s good conduct. Does the patient have any questions?”

“Just one, your honor,” Joker says meekly. “Who does your nails? This color looks lovely on you.”

“Case closed,”the Judge announces coldly, and brings the gavel down.

There’s movement in the room as one by one, the board members, lawyers, police officers and judge begin to rise and leave their seats. No one looks up, everyone shuffles off as quickly as they can. Milton Delgue only lingers for as long as it takes the courtroom officers to release Joker of his handcuffs, and then he too makes himself scarce, looking pale and dodging Joker’s attempts to pat him on the back and thank him. 

Bruce doesn’t blame him, or any of the others. He feels just a little bit dirty too, and _he_ actually wanted this to happen. 

In a way. He still has far too many doubts and would have felt much safer if Joker spent more time in the Manor, but he supposes he would have felt this way if Joker had taken five or ten years longer to convince Nisha of his recovery. 

And speaking of Nisha…

She’s talking to Joker now, quietly. Her face is stern, her eyes cold. Joker appears to be nodding along, and Bruce hovers by the bench, giving them time. 

And then the doctor is glancing to Bruce, and coming up to him, leaving Joker to wait for them with that same small, private smile spelled on his mouth.

“Remember what he is,” Nisha whispers to him urgently, steel in her eyes. “Don’t let yourself forget. He will notice if you do, and he _will_ use it against you.”

“I’ll do my best, doctor,” Bruce promises. He puts his hands in his pocket and rocks on his heels, trying to appear embarrassed rather than uncomfortable.

“For his sake as well as yours,” she insists, “you can’t forget. Take care of him, and don’t be too lenient. He’s in your care now. You need to act responsibly. And if anything suspicious happens, let me know immediately.”

“Okay,” Bruce agrees, because there is very little else he can do.

“Okay,” Dr. Mulligan echoes. She studies him, and then glances back to Joker. “Gentlemen.”

She nods at them both and then walks away at a brisk pace, her flat-heeled shoes hitting marble.

That leaves just Bruce and Joker, looking at one another across the court room. 

Bruce extends his hand. “Shall we?”

They walk out of the courtroom arm in arm, and stop when they step out into the murky, cloud-heavy day. Joker squints and grabs Bruce’s sunglasses from his breast pocket and slips them on, and then stands there for a few minutes, gazing out at the skyscrapers and the busy, noisy street. 

Bruce watches him for a minute with his throat all closed up, and then squeezes his arm, for Joker’s benefit as well as his own. He needs to feel the touch of Joker’s bony arm looped through his to make himself belief this is real. 

“So,” he says quietly. “How does it feel to be a free man?”

Joker looks at him then, and his smile loops into something crooked and just a little bitter. “You should have asked me that before you put this thing on me, darling,” he says, flashing the bracelet. “Then it would have made sense.”

Bruce parses that for a moment, and then shakes his head, his heart seizing up. “Come on,” he says. “Alfred’s waiting.”

He leads Joker down the court steps and towards the limo, its engine already running. He’s aware of heads turning to stare at them, some people with their mouths open, some with their phones out, already taking pictures. He has a pretty good idea of what will make the front page tomorrow, and he can’t find it in himself to mind. 

He opens the door for Joker, ignoring the curious crowd. 

“Hi there, Mr. Pennyworth, sir,” Joker says, sliding into the backseat. “Such an honor to meet you outside of my lovely rooms.”

Alfred gives a noncommittal hum. He’s looking at Bruce, who only just managed to shut the door behind himself. 

“Home, sir?” he asks tightly. 

Bruce looks at Joker. “Yeah. Home.”

Joker grins and slides closer, and presses up against Bruce, who puts his arm around him.

 

***

 

As soon as they stop by the main entrance Alfred opens the automatic doors for them. “I’ll park the car,” he tells them, looking at Bruce and Bruce alone. “Why don’t you and master… John…”

“J.,” Joker suggests, quietly amused.

“Master John,” Alfred repeats, “get yourselves settled? I’ll take care of dinner.”

“That’s fine, Alfred,” Bruce says. 

“Any special requests?”

“Surprise us,” Bruce suggests, and Joker nods with gusto. 

“Whatever you prepare is sure to blow my socks off,” he enthuses. “Your cooking is a marvel, Mr. Pennyworth, sir. And if you need any help —”

“No, thank you.” Alfred turns away to the gravel road. “Would that be all for now?”

“Yes, Alfred, thank you.” Bruce starts to climb his way out of the car and extends a hand to Joker. “Come on.”

“He doesn’t like me,” Joker observes quietly as Alfred takes the car out to the garage. He smiles. “Smart man.”

“He doesn’t exactly approve, no.” Bruce sighs, watching the car disappear out of sight. He suspects they won’t see hide nor hair from Alfred until dinner, and he honestly can’t begrudge him that. He looks back to Joker. “But he’s promised to keep an open mind. He’s very… supportive.”

“Lucky you,” Joker whispers with a strange, distant look in his eyes. He’s still staring down the path Alfred’s disappeared on.

Bruce watches him for a moment, and then quietly, he says, “I don’t need to tell you what will happen if you harm a single hair on his head.”

“Do you honestly think I would, Batsy?” Joker turns to regard him with narrowed eyes. “Now? After everything?”

Bruce swallows. “I don’t know.”

“No,” Joker shakes his head after another beat of silence. He gazes out after the car again. “Not him. There’s lines to this game, Bats, there’s rules, and some of them even I wouldn’t break.”

“You went after Gordon,” Bruce reminds him.

Joker’s eyes darken. “Yes. Back then, I wasn’t really… I didn’t…” 

He trails off, thinks about it for a moment, and then looks into Bruce’s eyes. “Well,” he says, smiling again. “I guess I was feeling a little darker than usual. Got a little too close. So maybe it’s a good thing you stepped in when you did, or I might have ended up doing something there would be no walking away from.”

“I’d never hurt _him_ , though,” he adds after a tight pause. “He never got between us, and after all, he _is_ your father.”

“He’s —” Bruce starts, but then Joker looks at him, quirking an eyebrow, and Bruce is all out of ammo.

It’s not like Joker’s wrong about that.

“Come on,” he says, changing the subject. “Let me show you around. Properly.”

“I’ll win him over,” Joker promises, taking Bruce’s hand again and letting himself be led up the few steps to the main doors. “You’ll see.”

“That’ll be the day,” Bruce whispers.

Then he pushes the door open. He looks at Joker and, after only a moment’s hesitation, puts his arm around his waist. “Welcome home.”

His arm never leaves its place at Joker’s waist as they start the tour and Joker doesn’t seem inclined to shake it off, leaning into Bruce as he’s taken to room after room after room. He doesn’t say much as Bruce guides him through the ballroom, the study, the dining room, the parlor, the theater; but he wants to touch nearly everything, running curious gloved fingers over curtains and bookshelves and lamps and marble and brass and portrait frames, and his eyes shine, and watching him, Bruce gets a curious tingly-sharp sensation in his chest trying to imagine his own home through Joker’s eyes. 

He gives up after Joker inspects the upholstery of one of the armchairs by the big fireplace and declares, quietly, “Looks a bit like a chair in a house I robbed once. Wasn’t nearly as soft as this one though. That one felt like petting a hyena. Have you ever petted a hyena, darling?”

“Can’t say that I have,” Bruce murmurs. 

“It’s nice enough, except for the fleas. Make sure you wash your hands if you ever do. They’re delightful creatures though, so ready to smile, so easy to please… loved it when I brought them treats… hey, is that real gold?”

And then he’s off running to touch the next shiny thing, and then the next, and the next, and as a result getting through the ground floor takes them about three times as long as Bruce first expected. 

Not that he minds. Joker’s quiet, often scathing commentary is disturbingly fascinating, and his enthusiasm…

Not cute, Bruce tells himself firmly. That word is forbidden.

But… close enough.

Right up until they reach the library, and then Joker stops dead in front of the massive portrait of Bruce’s mom and dad hanging over the mantelpiece.

Bruce pauses too, then, and follows his gaze up to their faces. As always the pair in the painting are smiling their time-faded, gentle smiles, gazing down at both of them now without a hint of disapproval, which doesn’t stop Bruce from imagining it there in their eyes anyway.

_Hi mom. Hi dad. I kind of brought a monster to live in our home. Is that all right?_

He tries to jump off that train of thought before it carries him any deeper down this path, because he’s tired. He’s thought himself round and round in circles about it all through the months leading up to the hearings, and he’s not going to come up with anything new now that the deed is done and Joker is actually here, in the flesh, marking everything with his fingers and leaving behind the smell of lemon and acid. 

It’s done, and they’ve started on this entire process in the first place to keep the city safe. That much hasn’t changed. 

It’s just that the methods to achieve that turned out to be a little… different from what Bruce first imagined when he extended his hand to Joker that rainy night at the funfair. Do the methods matter when the result is so much less blood on the streets? 

Alfred said they would have been proud of that much. Of Bruce taking the effort to reform someone unreformable, to try and help instead of just contain. Leslie said much the same thing during their sessions, and repeated it just this week, patting him on the hand and trying to assure him that he’s not being selfish in pushing through with it. Bruce has no choice but to accept that small comfort, even if the cold twist in his stomach refuses to quite unravel. 

Especially when Joker quietly steps up to the portrait and, very deliberately, touches his fingers to the golden frame. 

“Mommy and daddy, huh?” he whispers, his back to Bruce, head tilted to gaze up into the two warm, kindly faces. “How about that? What do you think they’d have said?”

Bruce closes his eyes and leans back against the piano, hard, letting the edges of it bite into the skin of his hands. He tries to swallow the instinct that urges him to grab Joker by the arms and turn him away from the portrait, screaming, _Get away from them._

“Nothing,” he makes himself say. “If they were still alive to say anything you wouldn’t be here.”

“Yes,” Joker whispers. His voice sounds strange, a bit hoarse, a bit too quiet. He presses his hand closer to the floral patterns embossed in the frame. “Indeed.”

The silence between them stretches, until Bruce glances to the bookshelf that hides the stairs down to the cave. 

He takes a deep breath, catches the sight of the silver around Joker’s wrist, and reminds himself, _Trust_. 

_Stick to the plan._

“Do you want to see the cave?” he asks, and is quietly proud of himself that his voice doesn’t break.

Joker doesn’t answer all at once. He stays where he is, facing the portrait for another minute or so, gazing up at it, biting his hand into the frame. 

When he turns to face Bruce, his eyes are dark, and so is his smile.

“I’d love to,” he says in a low, low voice that instantly sparks Bruce’s blood to rush fast and loud. “But do you know what I’d like to see even more right now? The master bedroom.”

Oh. _Oh._

“What about the bedroom Alfred and I picked out for you?” Bruce prods as Joker finally moves away from the portrait and starts to advance on Bruce. “Don’t you want to see that first? Or… your old rooms? We’ve cleaned them. Maybe you want to…”

“No,” Joker says. He’s standing in front of Bruce now, his hands rising to rest over Bruce’s shirt, sliding up to his shoulders. “We can do that later. We have so much time for all the rest, darling, and I don’t really want to go back _there_ anytime soon. But I do want to see your room. And I want to stay there for a while.”

His smile stretches, and he’s so close now, God, so close.

“Unless of course you’re ashamed,” Joker whispers, leaning in to breathe the words into Bruce’s ear. “I can tell you’re in the mood, but maybe you don’t want me in the bed your parents used to share? I’d understand that. We don’t have to if you don’t feel up to it, baby.”

Bruce looks at him, and then at the painting looming over them both.

It’s a test. Or a trap. Or both, each equally cruel and equally calculated, and maybe the first of many, but one of the most important — if not _the_ most important — Joker has ever put him through. All at once Bruce knows that whatever he does or says next will determine the entire course of their relationship for better or worse, and he also knows that he absolutely cannot let it get to worse. 

He’s not going to give this man any more reasons to challenge him. 

So he puts his arms around Joker’s waist to pull him even closer, and, with the portrait still watching them, he does what he’s wanted to do for so many long, agonizing months and which — it’s still so hard, so strange to accept it — he is now allowed to do. He kisses Joker, slow but deep, feeling the uneven texture of the acid-burned lips under the thick coating of theatrical lipstick. Joker’s mouth is as warm as he remembers and opens up for him easy like a flower for the sun, and it’s like a spark of static coasting through them both at once, lighting them up, opening up something dark and immense that’s been locked up for far too long. 

Bruce is the first one to pull away. He gazes at Joker’s glistening mouth, breathes in acid and citrus and Gotham all warm and stark on Joker’s skin. 

He takes Joker’s hand and whispers, “Let’s go.”

His heart leaps and twists all the way up to the bedroom, but he stays silent, and so does Joker. He doesn’t say a word when Bruce leads him inside and closes the door behind them both, and lets the silence linger as he comes to stand in the middle of the room, gazing at the stately king-sized bed.

“Well now,” he judges after a second. He smiles a quirky, lopsided smile at Bruce. “Smaller than I expected, but I suppose it’ll do.” 

He moves to shrug off the suit jacket. As he hangs it over the back of Bruce’s chair and starts to tug off the gloves, the bracelet on his wrist gleams in the setting sun.

“Here,” Bruce whispers, coming up to him from behind and catching his hands mid-movement. “Let me.”

Joker stays quiet as Bruce eases the gloves off his hands. His smile never fades, but widens when Bruce touches the bracelet and whispers, “Now this. A deal’s a deal.”

“Oh? Are you brave enough?” Joker teases, watching Bruce with narrowed eyes. “Do you actually trust me enough to take it off?”

“No,” Bruce tells him, choosing honesty. “But I did say nothing would happen until it’s off, and frankly… I’m all out of patience.”

He gets a dark, urgent thrill when Joker’s breath catches at that, and his blood rushes when Joker purrs, “I could get used to that tone of voice.”

Joker extends his hand to him, his wrist laid bare. “Go on, then, baby. If you dare.”

Very deliberately, Bruce catches Joker’s wrist in both hands and touches the cold metal. He looks into Joker’s eyes.

And then, still holding his gaze, he lets one hand sneak into the hidden pocket inside his suit where the remote for the bracelet sits. Heart racing, he presses the little protruding button — careful not to mistake it for the other one that activates the electric charge — and the bracelet clicks open like a handcuff, ready to be pulled off.

“I can take you without it anyway,” Bruce dares over the panic building in his throat, trying to smirk it down.

In the silence that drops over them Bruce pulls the bracelet off and lets it fall to the floor, and then, running on sheer bravado, he catches Joker’s bare wrist again and brings it to his lips, kissing where the metal has smoothed and etched bruises over time. 

Joker keeps himself very, very still as Bruce’s mouth gently traces the lines left on his white skin, feeling the delicate network of veins there jump and pulse under his lips.

Silence.

And then — 

“So go ahead and take me,” Joker whispers into the bright-hot moment, and steps close to distract Bruce’s mouth with his own.

They take it slow, at first. For all the urgency twisting and winding between them Bruce doesn’t want to hurry through this and Joker doesn’t try to make him, seeming to agree, _Yes, baby, we’ve got time_. This is only the first evening they have together out of many, many more, stretching out ahead of them like a carpet of possibility with sunsets just like this one dipping leisurely over the woods, casting the bedroom in pink and golden light. Joker cups Bruce’s face in both hands, and Bruce pulls him close by his hips again, easily finding that spot in the dip of Joker’s waist where his hands fit so perfectly. Their bodies move close enough that their heartbeats run against one another, strong and steady, and Joker’s breath tastes sweet and sour all at once, and Bruce’s world runs red with the smell and taste of him as their mouths caress one another without hurry, letting the need brim inside them second by sweet second. God, just this alone feels so good that Bruce would be happy just kissing Joker for the rest of the night. 

But then Joker pulls away from the kiss, and smiles a dazed, lipstick-smudged smile before he angles his head to the side to trail small, teasing kisses down Bruce’s neck. And Bruce can only shudder and hold onto him with all he’s got because that’s when it hits him just how unprepared he is for this. All his books, all the movies he’s watched, all the online gay community forums he’s perused, and he’s still so woefully not-ready that he has no idea what to do next because not only has he never done this with a man before, this is not just any man in his arms right now. This is the Joker, fierce and strong and volatile, with his hypersensitive skin and his craving for pain and his hair-trigger temper and his river-deep needs that Bruce is only just beginning to understand, and Bruce wants him so damn much but also all at once he’s terrified. 

He’s planned for this, he’s imagined it so many times in so many different ways. He’s mapped out move after move. But what if what he’s planned and imagined is wrong? What if he missteps? What if he ruins it on their very first night? There’s so many things that could go wrong, and what if, for a change, _he_ does something that Joker can never forgive?

He tries to move past those fears for now and play it by ear. He lets Joker kiss his neck, which God, it feels incredible, and keeps him close so he can caress his shoulders, and then gives in to a hot impulse and dips his own head to kiss a trail down Joker’s face, from his forehead to closed eyes to sharp cheekbones to mouth that opens up for him eagerly. He dares one hand up into Joker’s hair and pulls lightly, experimenting, questing, _Is this okay?_. 

Joker lets out an encouraging moan that urges Bruce to keep at it, so he does, and pulls a little tighter, moving to kiss Joker’s throat the way he’s wanted to for far too long. 

Even then he tries to keep the kisses light, far lighter than he really wants. He remembers what just a simple touch did to Joker back there in the shower and he doesn’t want to overstimulate him too soon, or cause him pain. He tries to be careful, and slow, even as his hands begin to move to unbutton Joker’s dark silk shirt, his mouth caressing white skin that smells of acid and lemons and Gotham.

Joker lets him continue like this for a while, urging Bruce out of his suit while Bruce makes short work of the buttons and inches the shirt, which flows like water between his fingers, to whisper lightly to the floor. When Bruce starts to push him back to ease down onto the edge of the bed Joker allows it without a word, and leans back when Bruce moves down to kiss the dip in his collarbone, down his sternum, along the planes of his chest. His breathing gets heavier then, and his hand twists in Bruce’s hair, but still he doesn’t say anything and lets Bruce appreciate him with his mouth, his body tensing by the second, by the minute, his breath hitching, his fingers digging deeper into Bruce’s scalp, until — 

“Stop.”

Bruce stills with his mouth just an inch from Joker’s nipple. He looks up.

“What is it?”

Joker shakes his head and pulls away to stand in front of the window, his half-naked body framed by spilling, dying sunlight. He’s panting, his pupils blown wide, an angry smear of lipstick around his mouth. He turns so Bruce can only see his profile, curtained in strands of green hair, and everything in Bruce goes cold. 

He thought they were doing so well, but — 

“J.?”

“I can’t do it like this,” Joker whispers, pressing both hands to his face and breathing through the cracks between his fingers.

Bruce swallows, trying to somehow bear through the twisting, swirling mess of lust and love and worry in his gut. 

“What is it?” he repeats. “Talk to me. Tell me what I’m doing wrong. Was it — was it too much? It was too much, wasn’t it? Do you want me to go? I can go. We don’t have to do it tonight if —”

“No, you idiot!” Joker throws his hands to the sides, suddenly feral, the light in his eyes far too bright now to be safe. “That’s exactly the problem — you’re overthinking everything, and it’s getting in the way! I don’t need you to baby me, Bats. I need you to —”

He cuts off, regarding Bruce with those arresting, toxic eyes. Time stops, just for a minute, and narrows down to the twitches in his body, the tick in the corner of his left eye.

The tick only gives Bruce only a quarter of a second’s warning, but it’s enough. When Joker lunges at him, he’s ready, and blocks the first hit before it lands across his face.

“J.?” he asks, grabbing both of Joker’s wrists in his, feeling the polished smoothness left behind by the bracelet. 

Joker jerks in his grip, trying to pull his hands free. There’s a light in his eyes that Bruce can’t look away from, and if his throat was dry before it’s parched now, the roar of blood rising in his ears to the point where he can barely hear anything else. 

“J.,” he repeats, one last time. He thinks he understands, but he needs to be absolutely sure. 

“Joker.” Joker’s voice is hard, and refusing to yield an inch. It drops even lower when he whispers, “Now give me what I need.”

Swallowing, drinking in the sight of everything that he reads in Joker’s face, Bruce nods. 

“Joker,” he agrees. “All right.”

There’s no more slowness after that. 

Alfred’s words flash in Bruce’s mind as Joker, quick as a viper, bites Bruce’s hand — hard enough to burn but not hard enough to draw blood. Words about families and love and healthy relationships that don’t need to rely on violence to thrive. He also remembers Joker’s comments, angry and impatient with such nonsense, dismissing any attempts on Bruce’s part to pretend that they could try to be something they’re not. 

He still has hope that they can do more than pretend at some point, one day. That one day Joker will let him. But they’re not there yet, and maybe Joker was right about Bruce overthinking something that, perhaps, really could be much simpler if Bruce only let it and played it by their own rules — by Joker’s rules, by Batman’s rules — rather than force them into something they both still need to learn. 

With a moment as big as this, maybe it is better to ease themselves into it the only way they know how.

And maybe he can understand Joker needing to reclaim and keep a semblance of himself on the day the world declared him harmless. 

He releases Joker’s wrists and advances on him, ducking a kick to his ear that’s more play than violence but would have still hurt like a bitch if it hit; and Joker twists away, ducking his blows, landing another kick to Bruce’s shin instead. Bruce manages to catch his leg and pulls, throwing Joker to the floor. Joker kicks on the way down, catching Bruce square in the chest, and flips back to his feet, grabbing the bracelet from the floor in one fluid motion.

He wields it like a knife when he tries to slash one end of it across Bruce’s face. Bruce catches his arm mid-stroke and blocks it, then twists it behind Joker’s arm, pressing so the bracelet clutters to the floor again. Joker laughs and tries to headbutt Bruce from behind, bringing his leg up to kick away at Bruce’s groin, and Bruce manages to jump away, but not before shoving Joker forward to crash against the window. 

They stare at one another from two ends of the bedroom, the massive bed still and silent between them like a promise. The silence fills up with their heavy breathing, the unspoken understanding, the weakness they have for each other. The quiet agreement on what is happening and where it’s leading them, steady and true. Joker’s eyes are on fire, and they reflect Bruce’s own. 

One heartbeat. Two. Three. Bruce counts them down in his head, and he sees Joker’s lips move along, measuring the moment out.

On the third heartbeat they start toward one another and meet in the middle of the room, their fists locking together as they press into each other, pushing forward with everything they’ve got.

Joker laughs when, inevitably, Bruce pushes him back. He laughs when his punch misses its mark and Bruce’s lands true, catching on his jaw. He laughs when Bruce grabs him around the middle and throws him onto the bed, and keeps laughing breathlessly as they wrestle on it, rolling, twisting, slipping away, kicking and kneeing and biting until they pant each other’s air and their erections press and slide into each other, down and down and down, their hips snapping more and more deliberately with each thinly disguised thrust, each press of body into body, skin against skin.

At this point it’s only natural to let their bodies coast on the current of physical violence and past it to what waits on the other side, something that, after all, is just another dialect of the same language, and one that they both speak to perfection, especially with each other. Bruce might have denied that at some point but won’t anymore, not when it feels this good to let go and trust Joker to know his own limits. They rock into each other steadily, rhythmically, breathing together, biting kisses onto the other’s skin and tasting grit and sweat, still play-fighting and wrestling on the bed but also letting themselves grope and grind and sigh and moan in the darkness that gains in on them from the windows. 

And this time it doesn’t feel wrong anymore, or awkward or self-conscious the way it did minutes ago. Instead it feels easy and right, like something they should have — might have — been doing all this time, and when Joker moans into Bruce’s neck this time Bruce lets himself moan with him.

“Batsy,” Joker breathes, clutching at him, tearing the shirt right off Bruce’s back and drawing slashes of pain to cool there instead. 

“Yes,” Bruce agrees, capturing Joker’s mouth and biting down on his bottom lip. 

“Come on, darling, I need you.”

“All right,” Bruce whispers into his ear, “okay.”

He kisses Joker’s neck again, hard this time, letting teeth graze over salt-slick skin. He sucks on the spot until Joker’s moan runs out of air and lets the sound feed into something dark and hot inside him that has him wondering how on earth he could ever worry that anything he does might be too much for this man.

No such thing as too much, with them. Never has been. Joker will take anything Bruce can give him and then some, and God, right now? After everything they’ve been through? 

Bruce wants to give him _everything_. 

“Show me what to do,” he pleads when Joker rolls them over and grinds into Bruce from above, his hair dusted in the last faint embers of the dying sun. In the coming darkness Joker’s body seems to absorb all the light into itself, a swathe of white moving over Bruce in a steady, vicious rhythm.

There’s blood in the corner of his mouth. Bruce doesn’t know when and how it got there, but it blends in with the lipstick stains now, painting Joker’s hungry face into something out of a Gothic horror.

Bruce shudders, watching him, and brings his arms up to keep Joker there so he can look his fill. To etch the sight into his memory, and appreciate fully what it is he’s brought into his bed. 

Into his parents’ bed. 

_Oh God, please forgive me._

Joker doesn’t give him time to sink into that thought. Instead he lifts himself up to his knees so he can undo Bruce’s zipper, and tugs Bruce’s pants off in just a few swift tugs. 

“Still with me, Bats?” he asks when he leaves Bruce lying on the bed in nothing but his briefs, and cups Bruce’s erection through the cotton. “I was going to ask if you weren’t going soft on me, but clearly…”

“That was terrible,” Bruce manages, but then he forgets all about terrible puns because Joker crouches over him on all fours and slowly lowers himself to lick up the length of Bruce’s cock over the cotton that is now clinging much too tight to his overheated, throbbing skin. 

Bruce presses his eyes shut then, and frantically counts to three in his head. He needs to focus. He needs to perform. He can’t be breaking character now just because he’s going out of his mind with pleasure and anticipation, and oh God, what is Joker _doing_ with that mouth —

Whatever it is Bruce dearly wants to let him get on with it, but if he does, he’ll come in seconds, and that is just not acceptable tonight. In a desperate bid for clarity he sits up and grabs Joker by the arms, and bodily hauls him onto his stomach. He traps him there with his entire body weight, catching Joker by the wrists. 

“Stay,” he orders, letting the moment carry him into the voice and confidence of the cowl. 

It gets even easier when Joker chants, “Bossy bossy Batsy,” and giggles like he might have done on rooftops and alleyways over the wind and traffic and explosions. Bruce can almost imagine they’re really out there, playing out an old fantasy that he’s often had but could never acknowledge, and it’s this fantasy that prompts him to tug Joker’s pants down, rolling his socks off too as he goes.

His breath catches at the back of his throat when he discovers that Joker went to his final hearing in full commando. 

Jesus fucking Christ.

“What’sa matter, Batsy dearest, cat got your tongue?” Joker teases, shooting Bruce a sly, excited look over his shoulder. “Let me know if she did so that I can carve it out of her.”

“Quiet,” Bruce growls, letting the game carry him away. He plants his hand into the back of Joker’s head and pushes his face into pillow, then sits over him to reach out into the bedside drawer.

“You’ve actually prepared!” Joker exclaims, voice muffled by the pillow. “How wonderful. Tell me, Batsy, did you study for this? Did you crack open a book full of naughty naughty pictures of cocks and anuses? Were there diagrams? I bet there were diagrams.”

Bruce drives his knee into the small of Joker’s back and then lies down on him, pressing him into the mattress from head to toe the way he now knows Joker will enjoy. 

“Remember what you said back in the gym?” he whispers, combing Joker’s hair to the side so he can mouth the words against the sensitive shell of his ear. “About lilac.”

“I remember,” Joker breathes, and there’s a very satisfying hitch in his voice that makes Bruce’s cock twitch in response.

“Good,” he manages. “Now tell me if I do something wrong. You have to tell me, Joker.”

“Don’t worry, baby,” Joker assures him quietly, and when he turns to look at Bruce there’s a dark stain on the pillow from where his blood and lipstick tainted it. “If I don’t like something, you’ll know.”

His smile seals the promise beyond any shadow of doubt, and satisfied, Bruce nods, kissing his ear in parting. Joker shudders under him in a way that shakes Bruce down the middle, and he has to sit back and just breathe for a second or two before he wills his head back on track and through the daze of lust that seems to have fogged him up. 

Right. 

Right. 

Okay.

 _You can do this_ , he drills into himself. _You’re the motherfucking Batman._

“Anytime tonight would be nice, cupcake,” Joker prompts, his legs swinging playfully. His right one misses Bruce’s head by about an inch and hits his shoulder instead. “We’re not getting any younger here. Unless of course you want me to take matters into my own hands. Because I could. As you very well know.”

The cheap provocation is transparent, but then again, maybe it was meant to be. It helps Bruce find his footing again, and remember what it felt like just letting himself go with the flow of it just minutes ago. This can be the same way, he tells himself. Obviously he needs to pay more attention for this next part but it’s not like Joker would ask him for something he can’t take, and besides… 

He’s never held back in the past when they were bringing each other pain. There’s no reason he should hold back now when pleasure is on the table. 

No reason at all, except…

 _Arkham._

Bruce’s entire body freezes as the one word drips down into his gut like a shard of ice. Before he can start wrestling with hesitation though Joker wiggles on his stomach and spreads his legs as wide as they will go, as though he can somehow catch the currents of Bruce’s thoughts and has decided that it’s time to bring out the heavy guns. 

He whispers, “Please, Batsy,” and opens himself up even more. 

Bruce swallows, and wishes there was more light in the room. The sight Joker makes like this steals the breath out of him all the same, and mesmerized, looking and looking until his eyeballs sting, he reaches out to touch Joker’s lower back just to feel it, to let it remind him that it’s the real thing spread out for him open and willing on his parents’ bed. Joker shivers when Bruce lets his hand caress a path down to one pale cheek and over it, outlining the pale curve before he gets brave enough to actually cup it in his hand, startled at the uneven texture of the ghost-white skin under his fingers, coarse in some places, smooth in others. 

“Are you sure about this?” Bruce lets out, because Arkham still clutches the edges of his mind, refusing to let go, and he needs to know before he goes any further. 

“Oh I’m sorry, am I being unclear?” Joker shoots viciously over his shoulder. “Is anything about this situation confusing you? Is the world’s greatest detective bamboozled in the face of —”

Bruce squeezes the curve of muscle in his hand and, to distract them both, gives it a light slap to let Joker know he gets the idea.

“Turn around,” he asks. “I want to see your face.”

“I’m rather comfortable the way I am, thank you very much.”

“But —” Bruce starts, and then swallows. Overthinking. Yeah. 

“Stay still,” he whispers, letting Batman fight his way back into his voice. 

It’s not like Joker hasn’t done it after Arkham, he reasons with himself. He fingered himself for Bruce and the cameras, for God’s sake. And if what he said during that was true he probably slept with some of his henchmen since then, too, and even if he didn’t, Arkham was a long time ago. He may not even remember it if he was drugged, and anyway, it may not have actually happened, although Bruce still doubts that he can believe what Joker said when Bruce confronted him about it.

The thing is, Bruce is on the curb of babying him again, something that Joker was _very_ clear about, so maybe he should just… stop. And let Joker actually decide what he wants, or needs, or doesn’t want. 

Maybe he should just trust him to know himself better than Bruce does. 

And so, carefully, he dips his hand into the jar of lube. He strokes Joker’s back with one hand, fingers stuttering on a network of old scars and those curious uneven patches of rough-and-smooth skin where, Bruce can only imagine, the acid burned itself deep. He’s both fascinated and horrified at the idea, and makes a note to pay closer attention to the texture of Joker’s skin, maybe map it all out one day, as he rubs the fine, translucent, flower-scented substance between his fingers to warm it up. The oil flows over his skin like honey, far better quality than he’s used to and more expensive than most of the contents of Bruce’s wardrobe, not that Joker ever needs to know that Bruce bought the high end stuff just for him. Bruce would never hear the end of it.

He makes a point to scoop out more than he usually uses on himself during the rare moments when he actually feels aroused enough to masturbate. 

He’s done it considerably more often ever since the tape, and God, it’s a mistake to think of it now. The thought of Arkham might have cooled him some but just like that he’s straining to distraction in his briefs again, his blood throbbing loud and hot, and he didn’t think he could get any harder but apparently his body is determined to prove otherwise. It doesn’t help that Joker is squirming under his hand now, hips snapping to grind impatiently into the delicate sheets beneath him as though trying to soil them as much as he can, out of urgency or perhaps something far darker. 

… _but maybe you don’t want me in the bed your parents used to share?_

Before he can stop himself Bruce lets his eyes tear away from the uncanny picture Joker makes and to the photograph of his parents, framed on his bedside table. The same bedside table he just took the ridiculously expensive lube and condom pack out of. It’s too dark to make out their faces but Bruce knows the picture by heart, having woken up to it every day of his adult life, and he imagines it in vivid detail now, hyper aware of his hand still stroking the curve of Joker’s ass. 

The cold, cold bile twisting up in his stomach at this is almost enough to douse the fire in his belly all over again.

Almost. 

But they had a point to make here, and this is all part of making a fresh start, and Joker is watching him with keen, burning eyes, the shadow of a dark smile curving up just past the shoulder hiding the rest of his face from view. 

_What will you do now, little Batsy?_ those eyes are asking, and then, _Too ashamed of me after all?_

Holding his eyes, Bruce squeezes the buttock on his hand and gives it another light slap, and orders, “Open up for me.”

Joker lets out a trembling breath and whispers, “Yes, sir,” and he does, lifting his hips just a little in invitation. Swallowing over a dry throat again Bruce makes himself run through the memory of the tape, and everything that he’s read about, and he thinks, Step by step. Take it step by step. It’s all biology, and Joker _will_ be vocal if Bruce screws something up, and so…

His fingers coated in fine, fine oil, he begins to circle them slowly around Joker’s entrance, massaging the sensitive muscle there as he gets closer and closer to home.

Joker’s entire body goes still when Bruce inches the first finger inside. It slips in so easily, the lube living up to its price as it pulls Bruce in up to the second knuckle with hardly any resistance, and yet, Joker’s body tenses around him and for a moment Bruce can’t breathe for the panic that he’s jumped the gun after all. 

But then the body beneath him relaxes. When Joker’s muscles clamp down around his hand again, it’s far more deliberate. 

“What did I tell you about babying me?” Joker demands, and the words are razorblades. 

“I want to make you feel good,” Bruce whispers. “Let me.”

Joker moves his hips, driving himself down on Bruce’s finger and rocking back into the bed. 

“Not tonight,” he demands, a low, guttural sound as he lifts his hips and fucks them onto Bruce’s finger again on a slow downroll. “I’m not one of your porcelain tarts, _Batman_. Don’t you dare treat me like one.”

“What do you want?” Bruce finds himself asking, his eyes glued to where his finger slips in and out of Joker’s moving hips. 

Joker growls into the pillow, sounding just as unearthly as he looks. The sharp dark smudge around his mouth only makes his teeth seem all the whiter, all the sharper as he bares them at Bruce. “I need you to be you.”

Bruce blinks, and when he does, something in him finally comes loose, or maybe clicks together like a puzzle piece finally finding the right match. Joker’s eyes bear into him never blinking, never once looking away, hot and bright and demanding. And the loose thing in Bruce finally responds. 

This time, when Joker rocks down slow and steady and deliberate, Bruce’s second and third fingers are waiting to meet him, and they slip into the pale body easily like hot knife through butter.

Joker’s whine is a muffled into the pillow as Bruce carefully twists his fingers, feeling around, seeking. Down, he remembers, close to the balls, just below… just under… and then up…

There.

He knows he got it the moment Joker’s entire body trembles on a shockwave, culminating in a sound that Bruce instantly knows he won’t forget for as long as he lives. Drunk on it, he rubs his fingers over that spot again and again and again in an easy, familiar beat until Joker is all out of voice and snapping his hips down on Bruce’s fingers, sharp nails dragging over the pillows like they’re trying to tear right through. 

He could come just from this, Bruce realizes, stunned and dazed and high on the sudden rush of lust and power. Jesus, he could. It wouldn’t even take much, what with how sensitive Joker’s skin is, and he’s probably overstimulated already, and the books talked about prostate orgasms and how they can follow one on the heels of the other with no refractory period, and Bruce found it hard to believe as he read about it but now, staring at the way Joker is breathlessly fucking himself on just three fingers…

He moves his hand more slowly, making sure to rub on the little nub he can feel there. He lets Joker set the rhythm and sits there hypnotized by it all, by the startling reality of it, by just how responsive to his touch Joker is. He wants to test it. He wants to see whether he can really make Joker come like this, and how many times. He wants them to lie there side by side and watch and caress to see just how much of it Joker can take, because he doesn’t understand how this could cause him this much pleasure, he doesn’t understand quite how Joker’s skin and perception work, but he’s starting to understand what it means for the two of them, and — 

God. 

He can’t take it anymore. Not tonight, not right now. One night they will have the time and confidence and fortitude to carry out Bruce’s fantasy and it will be lazy and sweet as it can ever be between them, but tonight neither of them has the patience anymore. The last shreds of it are steaming out of Bruce with every breath Joker cries into the pillow, and Bruce needs, fuck, he needs _right now_.

Joker lets out a wet sob when Bruce pulls his fingers out — too fast, shit it was far too fast, he should be more careful, but he can’t anymore. His hands fumble over the waistband of his briefs, and he doesn’t even care about the oil stains he’s going to leave on the cotton, too impatient to pull it off. 

His cock hurts when it springs free, dark and hard and leaking without a single touch, more desperate than he ever remembers being before. Bruce all but tears through the condom wrapper in his hurry to get it out, and through heroic effort manages to soldier right past Joker’s breathy, hoarse protests that _no, leave that, we should go without, I want to feel you._

Maybe later. One day. But even in the rush of lust there are some things Bruce just won’t compromise on until he can be absolutely sure they’re both safe, and this is one of them.

He pulls the condom down over his cock almost viciously, letting the chafe of it sober him up as much as it will. Joker’s eyes fix on him and his cock, and he licks his mouth as Bruce upends the jar of lube over it, guiding the substance down the length of the shaft all the way to the tip, so much of it that it drips down on the sheets.

Good. There can never be enough lube for this, and Bruce is determined to make it right.

“One,” he whispers as he takes up position between Joker’s legs, kneeling. Cock in hand, he guides it to touch around the tight, sensitive ring of muscle around Joker’s entrance, just nudging, questing, preparing. _Will it even fit_ , some small part of Bruce wonders, noting just how skinny Joker is, how big Bruce’s cock looks against the tight quivering entrance. 

“Two,” Joker echoes, lifting his hips up, letting his bent legs inch even further apart, insisting, open and ready. 

“Three,” they both chant as Bruce lines himself up and, holding onto the root of his cock with one hand and onto Joker’s hip with the other, guides himself inside.

He knows right away that he won’t last long. The grip of Joker’s body around him is tight like a glove a size too small, but so easy to sink into even so, shockingly easy given their proportions. Bruce tries to go slow but with the lube and Joker’s muscles relaxing for him to invite him deeper — so easily, with so much trust that it goes right to Bruce’s head — he finds himself halfway in before he even knows it. He tries to make himself stop, then, holding onto Joker for dear life, but that’s when Joker takes over and rocks back against him with all he has. They both moan when Bruce’s cock plunges in all the way, their hips connected now, their breaths quick and sharp and loud.

Bruce looks down, then, because he just cannot stop himself. He looks to where his body disappears into Joker, and down Joker’s skinny back, glistening white in the moonlight, the skin stretched so tight over his bones as though the force that fashioned him prepared too little of it to begin with and did what it could with what it had. 

Then Joker laughs. Quietly, hoarsely, on empty breath, his arms shivering as they support him. The sound is wet and trembling just like the rest of him, and this is when it truly hits Bruce: this is real. This is happening. This is their life now, singular, entwined like their bodies are, the Joker laughing himself out in Bruce’s bed with Bruce’s cock inside him, and Bruce thinks the laughter means it must be dawning on Joker now, too. 

Gently, he strokes a circle around Joker’s hipbone, trying to keep himself still until Joker goes quiet again, his head hanging low. His entire body is trembling around Bruce now, and his breath comes out hitched, shallow and short. 

“Hey,” Bruce whispers. He presses in, massaging over Joker’s waist, smoothing his hands over sweaty skin. Soothing. Easing. _It’s all right_. “Are you —”

“One,” Joker breathes, moving back on Bruce’s cock to let it slide halfway out. “Two…”

Bruce’s grip on his hips tightens again, and he breathes out, nodding. Yes. Yes, okay.

He rocks himself back in on _Three_ , gives them both a hot burning moment of connection, and then slides out. When he moves in again, the night itself seems to move with him.

One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three.

Just like when they fought. Just like when they danced. The same rhythm, the same beat, and Joker moves right along with him, rocking for him, urging him, conducting them both. Bruce wishes he could see his face. He wishes he could flip them over and take Joker looking into his eyes, to see what this is doing to him, to watch…

But maybe that’s exactly why Joker went with the position he did. Maybe he doesn’t want Bruce to see, maybe he doesn’t want to surrender any more than he already has, and that’s fine. That’s okay. Bruce will respect that, and it makes it easier for him too, easier to let it happen and let himself go and let the rhythm carry them past guilt and shame and reminders of what this man sighing in pleasure for him now used to be, used to do. 

He pushes in all the harder at the reminder, and leans over Joker to kiss between his shoulder blades. 

_You’ve come so far. I’m so proud of you. I love you._

In and out. In and out. Steady and true, as steady as Bruce can make it with pleasure already building low in his gut. He stares at the bones in Joker’s back, the sharp shoulder blades, the shock of hair. At his own cock sliding inside. It’s so hot in there, and so tight, every stroke lighting him up in a way he could never predict. He tries to imagine what it must feel like for Joker, and fails, but maybe that’s fine. It’s enough that he knows it’s good. And he does. Joker is making sounds now that edge somewhere tight and desperate, but he’s not slowing down, not stopping, and he hasn’t whispered the word _Lilac_ , and so when his rocking speeds up, Bruce complies and speeds up as well, nearly sobbing in relief. 

Yes. Yes. Yes.

He makes it last as long as he can. And then, when it feels like he won’t be able to stave off the rush of orgasm for much longer, he tries to bend over Joker to sneak one hand around him, to where he knows his lean white cock is bobbing, rubbing into the sheets. He wants to touch it. He wants to feel the texture of it in his hand, to find out if it’s as rough-and-smooth as the rest of him, and he wants to feel what it’s like to hold it as it pulses in pleasure. His hand snakes down, his hips snapping faster —

“No.” Joker slaps his hand away the moment Bruce manages to close it around his length. “No, don’t.”

“Please,” Bruce grunts into his ear. “I want —”

“ _No._ Just keep going, don’t stop, just let me —”

Bruce bites into his shoulder in desperation, and thrusts hard and fast into him, and watches as Joker’s hand disappears under his own body. He can’t see what it’s doing but Joker’s bent elbow tenses, once, twice, three times, and this time when Joker cries out the sound is a high keening noise that seems wrenched out from the very depths of him. 

He goes completely quiet almost immediately, stuck on a breath, as though what he’s feeling got too much to even breathe out. The muscles gripping Bruce’s cock clench around him, throbbing and hot. Joker is shaking, his breath coming out fast and shallow, and he’s collapsing into the pillow, pressing his face into it, shoulders jerking violently.

It’s a good thing he finished when he did, because seeing it, realizing what’s just happened, Bruce forgets all about self-control. His own peak catches him totally by surprise and he stutters, breathless, bent over Joker and crushing his hips in a vice-tight grip as he stays there buried balls-deep and releasing into him what feels like years upon years of anger. Denial. Need, and hate, and love all tied up in one another to the point where he doesn’t know which is which anymore.

Neither of them moves for a long, long time. 

Then Joker’s knees budge, straightening and stretching out on the bed. He’s lying himself down flat on the mattress, and Bruce follows, letting his body collapse on top of Joker’s, covering it completely. He’s still buried in, his cock only just beginning to soften, and as he pants into Joker’s ear his heart syncs with the pulse slamming in Joker’s neck. 

He kisses it, then Joker’s shoulder. The skin under his lips is sticky and salty with sweat. He doesn’t mind — kisses it again — lays his head down, and closes his eyes, one cheek pressed to the hot planes of Joker’s back.

He doesn’t protest when Joker seeks out his hand and threads their fingers together.

He has no idea how much time passes until Joker begins to squirm under him, but he manages to pry his burning eyes open and kisses between Joker’s shoulder blades one more time before he tries to lift himself up on his arms. 

“Sorry,” he whispers, “am I crushing you?”

Joker moves then, pulling himself up on the bed, letting Bruce slip out of him in the process. He turns onto his back. 

In the darkness, his eyes shine wet, and his face is streaked in tears and sweat stained black with mascara. 

“Just wanted to see your face,” he whispers, and his smile is a dark slash across his face. “Hey there, handsome. Come here often?”

Bruce snorts, giddy and just a little unhinged. He touches his fingers to Joker’s face.

“Because if you don’t, you will,” Joker purrs, snatching one finger to kiss the tip. “Very often. Over and over and over again…”

“Dammit, J.,” Bruce groans, and then Joker laughs, and Bruce can’t hide the smile that tears out of him in response. When Joker opens his arms for him Bruce collapses back onto him gratefully, pressing his face to his cooling chest. 

He kisses there, and then kisses again, and Joker hums quietly, bringing his hands up to caress down Bruce’s face and through his hair. 

“Good boy, Batsy,” he whispers. “Very good boy.” 

Bruce considers taking offense at that, and then lets it go. There is no metal around Joker’s wrist to catch against the skin of his face this time, and he closes his eyes, letting himself enjoy it. Joker’s fingers are soft and gentle like he now knows they can be. They stroke him in silence for a bit, and when Joker starts singing quietly, Bruce sighs, feeling lighter than he has in years.

“Not Barry Manilow again,” he protests without any heat behind it, and Joker chuckles softly, his chest vibrating against Bruce’s face. 

His heart rate is only just beginning to slow down. Bruce listens to it, and then looks up.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m wonderful,” Joker assures him softly. His smile is tender, even with the lipstick stains giving it a bit of a monstrous appearance, which in a way is fitting, Bruce supposes. 

He touches the side of Joker’s face again, feeling the dry tear tracks under his finger pads. 

“Okay,” he whispers. He doesn’t ask about the tears. Joker wouldn’t tell him, and anyway, he thinks he knows why they’re there. 

His heart aches, and he leans in to kiss the tender smile before it disappears. 

They trade slow, lingering kisses in the darkness. This time Joker doesn’t protest it and lets it go on, stroking Bruce’s hair, scratching lightly, playfully at the back of his neck. For his part Bruce twines green curls between his fingers, enjoying the strange smooth-stiff feel of it, supporting himself on Joker’s chest with the other hand. 

And it’s good. It’s so, so good. It’s good enough that Bruce can hardly accept it as real, and starts to worry that it might be wrestled from him any minute now…

Which is exactly what happens when the texture of the night changes around them suddenly, faint strips of light settling in the shadows on Joker’s face from the window.

Their mouths stop against one another, and without a word, they both turn their heads to gaze at the sky outside.

The bat-signal is burning above Gotham, far and small in the distance but stark enough to force right through their fragile moment of peace.

Bruce’s stomach drops. He looks into Joker’s eyes. “J. —”

“Go.” Joker touches the tip of his nose, and kisses it, and keeps smiling even as tightness curls around the edges of his mouth. 

“I don’t have to,” Bruce whispers. “Nightwing’s in town. I could ask —”

“Go,” Joker repeats, throwing himself down onto the pillows. “I’m feeling generous tonight. I’d be inclined to share. You’d find a reason to go out anyway, or you wouldn’t be the Batman I know and love.”

Bruce swallows, letting the word drop down into him and warm him up. He kisses Joker’s mouth one last time, because yeah, Joker’s right. As much as Bruce would love to stay the signal is burned into his mind now, urgent and bright. 

“I’ll be back soon,” he promises. 

“Of course you will. And then I want to have you again. Don’t take the suit off.”

Heh. “All right, I won’t,” Bruce promises. He hesitates. “Will you stay here?”

“Oh, I think so,” Joker sighs dismissively, glancing around. “This room is quite nice I suppose. I like the bed. Especially now that it smells like us. I got the sleeping pills in my suit jacket in case I get bored, and I can see there’s a TV here so don’t you worry your little pointy-eared head about me.” He pats Bruce on the cheek, and lets out a big yawn. He puts a hand over his stomach. “Might sneak into the kitchen for a snack later,” he speculates. “I do rather think we missed dinner.”

Bruce closes his eyes. Shit.

“Okay,” he says, and finally finds the strength to unglue himself from Joker’s body and sit up. Immediately the air in the room feels far too chilly on his naked skin, and he misses Joker’s fingers in his hair. 

Joker’s hand grabs his when he’s done putting on his dressing gown and starts heading for the door. The grip is startlingly tight, and when Bruce looks at Joker, he finds his eyes blazing with a fire he doesn’t know where to place.

“Just remember,” Joker whispers darkly. “You are mine now. You’ll be saving the last dance for me.”

“Yeah,” Bruce agrees slowly. “I will.”

“Good.” Joker releases his grip as instantly as he closed it, and sits back against the pillows, apparently satisfied. “Don’t forget about the suit.”

Bruce nods. When he heads out the door, Joker settles in with his back to the door, gazing out at the bat-signal in the sky.

 

***

 

He does remember about the suit, and when he gets back, Joker is waiting for him, still naked but washed and smelling clean and fresh. He’s watching the live news reports on the battle with Croc, and doesn’t turn it off when Bruce leans over him and kisses him with all he’s got, not quite believing that Joker is really there, is really his, and hasn’t been just a fever dream far too good to be true. 

They fuck again hard and fast and dirty, with Joker climbing on top of him and inching himself down on Bruce’s cock and then riding it without a word, hands roaming greedily over the plates of the suit. His hands are over the bat symbol as he comes, once again not letting Bruce touch his cock; and Bruce isn’t far behind, fucking up into him vicious and quick until his own balls draw up and he spends himself into Joker’s willing and open body the second time that night. 

“Mine,” Joker whispers hoarsely, kissing the bat on Bruce’s chest. “All mine.”

“Yours,” Bruce agrees dazedly, holding onto Joker’s naked wrist, and doesn’t admit that he’s been thinking _Mine_ the entire time, too.

He thinks Joker knows anyway.

They settle down side by side to sleep then, Bruce only bothering to tug the cowl off and leaving the rest of the armor on, Joker tucked close under Bruce’s arm. But not before Joker makes the point of taking the sleeping pill, holding Bruce’s eyes as he does.

“So you can sleep easy knowing I won’t gut you,” he teases, but there’s a hard glint in his eye that shows it’s only half a joke.

And Bruce doesn’t protest it. He’s just grateful that he didn’t have to be the one to suggest it, because he knows he wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep next to Joker otherwise. 

He doesn’t need to admit it. Joker just seems to know, like he seems to know so much, and this time, Bruce is content to let it slide. 

He still waits until Joker’s breath evens out before he can let himself close his eyes, and as he lies there in the darkness, his eyes drift over to the window where dawn is slowly beginning to break. They turned the bat signal off hours ago but Bruce can still see it glowing before his eyes, and then he looks at the green curls tucked under his chin. 

They need to get away, he thinks sleepily, tiredly. They need to have time to get to know one another in all the ways they still have left, to see if they can keep spending time together in close quarters without killing each other, and Gotham will never let them. Already he feels guilty about leaving Joker alone on their very first night together and he knows that it won’t get any better in the future. Something needs to be done…

And he thinks, right before he lets his eyes finally close, that he might have a plan.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3 months later...
> 
> I know, I know, I know. I really am sorry. But it's here! And it's long! And it's got fluff and smut and angst, all rolled into just one day!
> 
> (I cannot believe one day took an entire chapter and 3 months to write. What even is this. Why.)
> 
> Anyway, if you haven't checked it out yet the amazing Joe-kerrs has started posting their [comic based on HWA](http://halfwayacrosscomic.tumblr.com) \- trust me when I say you'll want to see it. It's amazing. 
> 
> Many, many warm thanks to everyone who kept leaving feedback on the previous chapters, dropping asks on tumblr, leaving kudos and expressing interest in this story in other ways; I'm not sure I'd have managed to ever finish this hell of a chapter without your encouragement. I love you.
> 
> And many thanks to Robatics for being an amazing friend and offering great advice without which this chapter would have SUCKED. 
> 
> The usual warnings apply here, with a special warning for a panic attack scene near the end. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy it!

The next morning Bruce wakes up to silence.

The first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is the ceiling, which is odd, since he usually doesn’t sleep on his back. The bedroom is dark, sketched in hazy sunlight tinted red from the drawn curtains. He doesn’t remember drawing them. 

Bruce takes a moment to let his eyes burn with leftover sleep, and breathes in deep through his nose. There’s a fresh, clean note in the air. Open window, then, and breeze from the grounds, mowed grass and rain swirling with… something sharper, tangy. Musky. Sweat, and… 

He tries to move. His muscles, sludgy and stiff, take too long to respond. And there’s something else besides making it hard to move, constricting him, heavy pressure on his chest and arms and legs; at first Bruce is confused where it might be coming from until the heavy creak of armor reminds him.

The suit. 

He’s slept in the suit.

He’s slept in the suit because the Joker –

Because J. asked him to keep it on last night.

Oh God.

All at once his breath quickens. He swallows dry and coughs. It’s like someone pulled the plug on his memory and suddenly he’s drowning in images from last night: the sounds, the sights, the sensations, all of it burning hot on his sweaty skin in a rush of arousal and guilt and doubt and all sorts of complicated, messy feelings that he knows will pull him under if he only lets them. 

God. God. 

_Joker._

Bruce needs to turn his head. He tries but his body doesn’t obey, and not just because of the stiffness that bled into his muscles overnight.

It’s because he’s fucking terrified.

He doesn’t know if he can face whatever is waiting for him on the bed. What it’ll mean if he looks to his side and Joker isn’t there.

What it’ll mean if he is.

Bruce closes his eyes and delays for as long as he dares, buying himself a few more seconds to doubt and hope and then doubt again. He isn’t sure just what he’s hoping for when it comes down to it. In some ways, maybe last night really was a dream. Maybe it was enough for Joker. Maybe he got what he wanted and fled, and maybe… 

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Bruce grimaces and swears under his breath. He doesn’t have time for fucking maybes. He’s fed up with them, with himself and his own cowardice.

 _Just do it_ , he thinks. _Get on with it. Whatever you find, you’ll handle it, one way or another._

He opens his eyes and manages to twist his neck to the side. And then his heart all but stops when he gets a mouthful of green hair.

“Joker,” he whispers, trembling, losing his voice as it breaks. He manages to find it on the second try. “J.?”

He listens closely, and detects a sound in the thick half-gloom. 

Breathing. Steady and quiet, regular, through the nose. Not his own. 

Joker’s.

Bruce listens to it, and as he does, his heart swells bigger and bigger with every soft sound until his chest feels much too small to hold it. Joker’s hair tickles his mouth, his cheek, his chin. He tries to focus on it, squinting at green curls that look almost brown in the reddish gloom. 

_He’s here_ , he thinks, over and over and over again. _He’s here. He’s… here._

It doesn’t feel real to him right up until the moment it feels far too real by half. As the acceptance finally sinks in, what feels like a bar of lead drops right along with it, and Bruce lets his body sag back onto the bed under its weight. He can’t exactly feel the texture of Joker’s body through the suit but the shape of him pressed up against Bruce reminds him of the way they fell asleep last night — him in the suit, Joker stark naked, cuddled up to half-lie across Bruce with his hand splayed over the bat symbol on Bruce’s chest. 

From the shape of it, Joker hasn’t moved at all through the night, and that’s when a little nugget of memory comes loose to remind Bruce that Joker took the sleeping pills. For him. So they could stay together without Bruce feeling he should keep himself awake, which he undoubtedly would have done despite his best efforts to the contrary. It must have been — what, 3am? 2? And the pills usually knock Joker out for 8 hours minimum.

Bruce wonders what time it is. 

Not that it matters. _He_ ’s wide awake now and he’s not about to go back to sleep anytime soon, not with the way his head screams at him, not with how his chest feels piled high with rocks. Now, he can either lay here burning with the press of Joker’s naked body against him and stare blankly up at the ceiling and let himself think and think and think until he’s raw and aching with it. 

Or he can…

Get up. And get out of the suit. And take a shower. He hasn’t had a chance to wash up at all last night, just a quick wipe-down when the bat signal lit up the sky after their first… their first…

Bruce’s face goes hot, and he can’t even blame it on the suit this time. Blood rushes where it definitely isn’t supposed to and he shivers when chilled, rain-scented breeze from the window brushes over his exposed, hardening cock, which lies there pathetically out and vulnerable to the elements now after Joker’s — alarmingly deft and decisive — dealing with his codpiece last night. 

Which he doesn’t want to think about right now. Except that he really, really does.

Yeah, he needs to get up, and now. 

Tentatively, he tries to pull himself up against the headboard. The body draped over his doesn’t stir. Bruce shuts his eyes for a moment, and then finally, heart slamming, he feels brave enough to look down, into the mop of messy green hair and past it, down, down, down, over bony white shoulders, skinny chest, sharp hipbones, an endless expanse of leg. 

One white hand is still curling over the bat on Bruce’s chest. The Joker’s hand, with its sharp jutting bone and long fingers and painted nails. 

The same one that used to hold a gun as if it were a toy, and pull the trigger without a second’s hesitation.

Bruce’s heart tugs, and for a moment it’s painful enough just to breathe.

 _Stop that_ , he tries, _stop that right now._ But it’s no use. The same panic that gripped him in the cave with Dick, that had him short of breath and small and pathetic on Leslie’s couch, is crawling up his limbs now, radiating from the center of his chest where Joker’s hand lies, and honestly, he’s amazed that it took him as long as it did. He shuts his eyes on it and does his best to breathe, and to keep it away from choking him up even as he frantically presses his back into the headboard and massages a gloved hand to his forehead to give himself something tangible and physical to zero in on.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

He needs to move. It’s only gonna get worse if he doesn’t. One step at a time. What’s done is done and all he can do now is more forward. 

So he does. Carefully, as soon as the coldness gives an inch, the sweat on his skin growing uncomfortably cool. Relocating Joker’s long pointy limbs from around himself and to the other side of the bed is a slow process, and he tries to be gentle, freezing up at the smallest hitch in Joker’s breath. The arm over his chest goes first, slack and easy in Bruce’s grip; then the leg, bent across Bruce’s bared crotch. That’s when Bruce catches sight of his own penis, gone limp now, and God, it looks ridiculous out on display like that surrounded by plates of armor. Bruce is absurdly glad that Joker is still off in medicated dreamland or it would be open season on him and his dick and honestly he can’t even imagine the material Joker would come up with for that. 

The fact that he’d worry about something like that at all makes him snort, and the sound is far too loud and just a touch hysterical but perhaps this little dash of the ridiculous is exactly what he needed. Some of the tightness in his chest eases, and he’s a little more confident, a little less trembling-raw when he finally cups his hand around the back of Joker’s neck to keep his head in place as he sneaks his arm out from under it. 

He is gentle laying Joker’s head down on the pillow beside himself, and, a bit calmer now, he lets his hand linger and stroke idle patterns into the side of Joker’s neck. 

He gazes down at Joker’s face and thinks, swallowing, that he may need to sit down to Leslie’s notebook sometime this afternoon if he’s to have any hope of untangling any of the thousand messy things the sight makes him feel. He’s definitely not looking forward to that. Already he feels absurdly fragile, one wrong thought away from keeling over, his heart strangely sore and warm all at once, and… 

Something catches his eye, and he lets his gaze drift to the pillows. Blood and makeup, both equally dark, dried now, smudged into one mess of a stain over the satin pillowcase.

Bruce can only stomach looking at the stains for about a heartbeat or two before he shakes his head and forces his gaze away. Instead, he seeks distraction in a long sweep over the bedroom, the suit creaking and rustling as he moves to sit up properly and throws his legs over the edge of the bed.

That’s when he notices the breakfast tray: the food, covered under an elegant glossy dome to preserve heat, and orange juice and a thermos of coffee for two congealing on the bedside table, along with a folded copy of the _Gotham Gazette_. On Joker’s side there’s an orange vial full of oblong white pills and a bottle of water. 

Bruce stares at the new items, connects them with the drawn curtains and open window, and wants to scream. 

Alfred.

Heart sinking all the way down to his feet, face hot, Bruce directs his gaze to the floor. Sure enough, it’s been swept clean of the clothes they threw all over the room last night. 

Which only makes it easier to notice the glint of Joker’s shock bracelet and — yeah, and the two used-up condoms, very much still there on the carpet where Bruce tossed them, dried now and shriveled up into balls of stained wrinkled latex.

Bruce stares at them for about a minute or two, and thinks that he’s more or less ready to die now, please and thank you. Something wet and hot bubbles up in his throat and tastes suspiciously like hysteria. He glances to Joker’s face.

“I suppose _you’ll_ think it’s hilarious, you bastard,” he whispers to it.

It stays still, its rigid muscles relaxed out of the strain of their usual lively grimaces. Resting, like all the smiles and pouts and other acrobatics it performs day in and day out are exhausting work.

And maybe they are, for all Bruce knows. He wonders if Joker might have slept this deeply without the drugs after what they did last night, and the thought is about as helpful as panicking about Alfred, mainly because it once again makes him stare at Joker in his own bed and remember in stark detail what it felt like to kiss him and touch him and be inside him. His hand twitches, itching, and…

He balls it into a fist, feeling like the world’s biggest creep. He is _not_ going to molest Joker in his sleep. He hasn’t sunk quite that low yet. He’s not gonna sit there and stare at him either, however tempting the idea might be, because he knows himself well enough to predict that it would only further upset his mental balance, or what passes for it at the moment. His head is far too full. What he needs is just to — 

Get a grip. One of them will have to, and he has a feeling it won’t be Joker. 

Right.

He gets to his feet. Breeze gusts into the room as he does, and Joker shivers in his sleep, curling in tight on himself over the covers. That’s when Bruce notices the gooseflesh on Joker’s skin and realizes that Alfred hasn’t brought any blankets to cover him, which… isn’t surprising. It’s not even disappointing because Bruce knows he doesn’t have the right to feel disappointed. Joker is going to have to earn Alfred’s favor and it will take time. 

Still, as he unclasps the cape and drapes it over Joker’s body as a makeshift blanket, the knowledge hangs dull and heavy over Bruce and doesn’t let up as he shuts himself in the bathroom, gets going with the slow process of shedding the suit plate by plate and steps into the shower.

The water runs cold. Bruce stands directly under the spray, one hand touching the tiles. He closes his eyes and tries to focus on the water, and the water alone. 

Only when the chill of it shocks away most of the anxiety and lends him some much needed distance does he let himself think.

Logically, he knows nothing good will come out of him beating himself up over what he let happen. It won’t help anyone. If he decides to let the guilt of sleeping with a murderer swallow him whole and turns back on his word, he might make it easier for his immediate family, but he will also unleash hell on his own city of a kind he can’t — doesn’t want to — imagine. Joker won’t take kindly to rejection after everything he’s gone through for Bruce, and honestly, Bruce doesn’t _want_ to reject him, not even with the dark cloy of guilt and doubt sticking to his ribs and making him sick. It’s a good thing that Joker is still here with him. It’s good for the city, and for…

And it’s good for the two of them. Probably. Maybe. Bruce still can’t quite imagine just how they’re gonna make it work in the long run, especially given his reaction this morning, but he also knows right then and there that he’s going to do his damnedest to try. He won’t let it all collapse just because he can’t get over himself. Joker hasn’t held a gun in his hand for years, and the fact that he’s here now, sleeping in Bruce’s bed, is a victory. Because it means he’s not out there in Gotham causing mayhem, which is what set them off on this wild course to begin with, and yeah, the path ended up being far too personal than Bruce first signed up for. It doesn’t change anything. The stakes are the same when you think about it, and he’s just…

He’s just… 

He sighs, massaging his temples. The knot in his chest doesn’t want to be reasoned away. So he stops trying.

Instead, he moves, rolling first his neck, then his shoulders, then his hips. Slowly, still standing under the cold spray, he stretches the stiffness out of his muscles bit by bit, breathing through it, taking his time. He then slides into an easy exercise routine right there on the slippery wet tiles, moving deliberately, focusing on his own body until he finds his center again in the familiar pull and yield of it returning to his control. 

It’s too much to think about, all of it. Far too much for him to even hope to make sense of it. So he won’t. 

Instead, he decides to be productive. 

He finishes his exercise routine and shocks the last of the stiffness away with even colder water. Shrugging into his bathrobe, he returns to the bedroom, picks up the used condoms off the floor and throws them into the bin, and deposits the shock bracelet next to Joker’s pills.

“Okay,” he murmurs to the still-sleeping Joker before sitting on his own side of the bed. “Food or paper first?”

His stomach grumbles and settles the question for him. Bruce takes the lid off the food to reveal generously buttered pancakes and eats two of them in bed — back against the headboard, legs stretched out over the covers — gazing down at Joker every two or three seconds. His chest twists up every single time he does, and he wonders if he’ll ever get used to the sight enough that it won’t. 

He doesn’t know if he should look forward to it or dread it. 

Which is exactly the sort of thinking he’s been trying to avoid, and he sighs, putting the plate away. He glances to Joker again. “You’re gonna be the death of me, aren’t you?” he accuses.

Joker’s face doesn’t react, but Bruce imagines the lips curling into a smile anyway.

And there’s that distracting urge to touch him again. To press his fingers against the sharp cheekbone, to gently examine the texture of Joker’s hair, to kiss…

Bruce clears his throat and decides, right, time to move. He’d rather brave Alfred’s teasing than test his own patience any longer. He pours himself coffee, grabs the cup, the _Gazette_ and his phone and promptly removes himself from temptation, only allowing himself one last glance over his shoulder at Joker sleeping peacefully in his parents’ bed, covered in Bruce’s cape. 

Bruce closes the door on him with a riot kicking up in his heart, and suspects he might just be going insane.

“Alfred?” he calls as he makes his way downstairs.

No answer. The Manor is silent and sleepy, the wood humming under Bruce’s feet and he slopes on to the kitchen. He risks a peek, determines it to be an Alfred-free zone and deposits himself there with some relief, then finally takes a look at the _Gazette_.

The picture of him escorting Joker into the limo at the courthouse steps glares at him from the front page, under the heading, _The Clown Prince of Crime — Is He Back?_

Bruce takes a moment to study the picture. He imagines there must have been quite a few of them flooding the _Gazette_ offices yesterday, and silently congratulates the poor soul who had to sift through them — the shot they selected was taken at the exact angle to show off his and Joker’s arms linked together. He almost wishes he could see the editor’s faces when they saw that one. It’s a wonder they waited until the morning edition to run it. 

Sipping on his coffee, Bruce skims the article, and isn’t surprised to find that while it’s heavy with speculation it contains precious little in the way of detail. Looks like Vicky hasn’t been able to make anyone talk. 

Good. The impression Batman made on the importance of secrecy on everyone involved in the case is still holding up. Bruce wouldn’t want too much to leak too early. Not that it’s not going to be a shitstorm any way he spins it, but he’d much rather have control over how and when the story actually breaks. 

He checks his phone then, and smirks when he’s greeted with a barrage of texts from Vicky. He answers her with a cryptic _Wait and see_ and contacts Dick with reassurances that yes, he’s still very much alive, thanks for the concern. 

Only then does he get started on the phone calls he really wants to make. 

 

***

 

Alfred catches him still at it about an hour later, striding into the kitchen with his hair still wet. He must have been outside; he brings with him the clean, damp smell of rain. His jacket is immaculate though, and he smiles at Bruce as he comes in, even if there’s something stiff about it that Bruce blames on Joker’s presence. 

Bruce gives him a nod and turns to the window, saying, “Yes, of course I’m aware, but wouldn’t you agree that it’d be good for him to —”

Alfred busies himself brewing a second pot of coffee as Bruce talks and talks and talks, stalking around the kitchen. Only when Bruce hangs up for a temporary break to pour more coffee into himself does he comment, quietly, “Why, Master Bruce, I do believe you’re plotting.”

“Plotting is such an ugly word.” Bruce sighs as he collapses into a chair. He eyes Alfred’s fresh coffee pot hopefully. 

“It feels adequate. Was that the District Attorney on the line?”

“The very same.” 

“Ah. And what might you have needed of him merely a day after the case?”

Mercifully, Alfred follows this up with a coffee refill, and Bruce downs the scalding drink with a glow of gratitude. 

“Working on it,” he says. “It will require more phone calls in a minute.”

Alfred studies him with deep suspicion, and Bruce sits up straight, attempting to look innocent. “It’s not a bad thing,” he insists. “You’ll get a bit of rest. If it goes through.”

Alfred meets his eye and doesn’t drop the suspicious face for another heartbeat. Then he sighs and puts his own cup down on the saucer with a soft, refined click. “I take it last night was a success?”

Bruce is very glad he wasn’t drinking in that precise moment — he might have scalded himself by upending the contents of his cup right onto his bare legs. 

“Well, I…” he tries, face hot, and clears his throat when his voice breaks. He gives it another try, struggling to remember that he’s a grown-ass man and he’s allowed to have sex, for God’s sake. 

“I think so,” he manages. “He hasn’t run away, in any case.”

Alfred’s eyes are unreadable when he says, “I noticed.”

Bruce looks away and exhales through his nose, feeling like an idiot. “Can we please not talk about how you found us this morning? Please. I’ll pay you.”

Alfred’s face takes on a shrewd edge, and he leans his elbow on the counter thoughtfully. “The Rolls Royce,” he decides.

“Fine, it’s yours.”

“Splendid. Now, where is your newly appointed other half?”

Bruce elects to ignore Alfred’s ironic tone. “Upstairs, still asleep. He took the pills last night. I think we’ve still got about…” he consults his phone, “two hours before he starts waking up. Maybe more.”

“I see.” Alfred’s face stays flat when he takes it in. “And once he does, what are your plans for the day?”

Bruce shrugs. “I want to show him the cave,” he says, and pretends he doesn’t notice the tightening in the corner of Alfred’s mouth. “And we’ve got some planning to do. We need to agree on a story to tell the press.”

“Ah, this reminds me, miss Vale was kind enough to call.”

Bruce nods. “Yeah, I thought she might.”

“Sixteen times this morning, as a matter of fact.”

“And?”

“She was rather adamant that I remind you that you two used to be close, and that you, and I quote, owe her.”

“Anything else?”

“Some choice epithets that I do not care to repeat.” Alfred takes a measured sip of his coffee. “Your publicist was also most eager to speak to you. As was Lucius and the Commissioner. You appear to be very popular this morning, for some unfathomable reason.”

Bruce sighs. “I bet they all wanna know if I’m still alive.”

“The question did arise.” Alfred’s eyes twinkle. “On the whole, I advise caution if you intend to go out. Miss Vale in particular seems rather liable to jump out of the bushes.”

“Not her style, but I wouldn’t put it past the others.” Bruce gazes out the window. “Is the pitchforks mob storming the gates yet?”

“I wouldn’t quite call it a _mob_ ,” Alfred speculates. “A throng, perhaps. A handful of eager investigators with a shortage of restraint. Nothing too unsettling.”

“So far,” Bruce murmurs. He looks up. “Alfred —”

“Not too worry, sir,” Alfred interrupts, raising a forestalling hand. “I do realize the times we’re in for. We’ll pull through. And while I admit that I find your decision to be open about the… relationship… somewhat hasty, I can also respect it. I just wonder, have you discussed it with _him_ yet? Is he onboard?”

“Not… quite yet,” Bruce admits. “But I don’t think he’ll —”

“Then my advice is that you do, and soon, before any more… suggestive photographs make it into the press without his knowledge or consent,” Alfred presses with a hard glint in his eye. “This cannot be only your decision, sir. Which of course you realize.”

“Of course,” Bruce mutters, dropping his eyes to the coffee cup and feeling hotly like a scolded child. “I really am sorry for all that, for all it’s worth,” he whispers into the cup. 

Alfred shakes his head. “Bruce,” he says quietly. “Tell me. Are you all right?”

Bruce swallows. He looks up at Alfred and tries to smile. “You know I wouldn’t know how to answer that.”

Alfred nods, thoughtfully, finishing up his own coffee. There’s something oddly sad in his eyes when he locks them with Bruce’s again. “I know you have a lot on your mind,” he says quietly, “which is why it pains me so much to have to add to it.”

Bruce sits up, trying to read him. His hand tightens over his mug. “Alfred?”

“I’ve been… shopping this morning, Master Bruce,” Alfred says. He moves to pull up a small leather briefcase, which he then places on the counter. “You are not going to like what I bought. It will upset you, for which I apologize. Nevertheless, I need you to hear me out now while we’re alone, because this is very important. I promise that this will be the only time we ever discuss it.”

He falls silent, waiting for Bruce’s reaction. Bruce can only stare at him, everything inside him gone cold and tight.

“Okay,” he tries finally, and Alfred nods, laying a hand on the briefcase.

“There is no delicate way to say this,” he starts, gazing down at it, “so I’ll be plain: you have brought a murderer into our home. Now,” he says quickly as Bruce jolts in his chair, “I promised that I will support you, and I will not go back on my word. You are my son and I wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone with everything now that you need me most. But I need you to understand the situation you’ve put me in, Bruce. The Joker is still a threat. He may be trying to get better, and he might even be genuine about it, and I do believe that he loves you. Even so, he is unstable and there is no telling what he might do in a fit. I do not have the benefit of your insight. I can only observe from the sidelines, and from the sidelines, the fact is that from this day on we are both under constant threat.”

Bruce swallows, and absent-mindedly tucks the bathrobe closer around himself. He looks at the briefcase with horrible, horrible suspicion. “What’s in the bag, Alfred?” he whispers.

Alfred looks sad now, and old, but also resolute, and there’s steel in his face when he says, “This is non-negotiable, Bruce. This is my one and only condition. You will accept it, and we will move past it, and with any luck, it will never have to come up again.”

Blood rushes in Bruce’s ears. When he moves his mouth he can taste grit on his tongue, grit and mud and puddle water, and the sharp metallic tang of blood. “What’s in the bad, Alfred?” 

“A gun,” Alfred says. He looks into Bruce’s eyes now, never flinching, and before Bruce can react in any way he continues, “I will not carry it on my person. I will hide it somewhere only I will be able to find it, and it will be fully loaded. You won’t know where it is. The Joker won’t even know it’s here. But it _will_ be here, and the moment either of our lives are in danger I will get it and I will use it. Do you understand me, Bruce?”

Bruce stares at the bag. His throat is moving. He cannot meet Alfred’s eyes.

“Get it away from me,” he says.

“Bruce.”

“I want it out of this house right now.”

“With all due respect… no.”

“I’m serious, Alfred. I want it out of here.”

“No. I told you, this is non-negotiable.”

“I will not allow you to keep a gun in the house.”

“Again, with respect, Bruce, but you don’t get a say in this,” Alfred says, hard and unrelenting. “This is my only stipulation.”

“We have rules —”

“The rules have changed when you decided to put yourself in danger.” 

“Not that rule!”

“Bruce, listen to me.” Alfred’s voice is unyielding. “I have made so many compromises for you, because I love you. And because I do, I will compromise on so much more. I will do my best to get over my reservations regarding your partner as long as he earns it, and if I ever come to trust that he does not wish you ill I promise you I will throw the gun into Gotham river myself. But until that day comes I will keep it here because while I can respect that you love this man, I _will not let him hurt you_.”

Bruce works his throat, trying to stop the trembling in his body. His teeth fit against one another to the point of pain. He can’t look at the briefcase anymore. He can’t look away. 

Slowly, Alfred slides it off the counter. The lines on his face make him look a hundred years old, and just as tired. “We shall not discuss it further,” he says quietly. “I’ll leave you to think about it. Just remember, if you find it and take it away, I will get a new one to replace it.”

“I could send you away,” Bruce finds himself whispering, his eyes lingering, unfocused, somewhere on a shelf across from him, left of Alfred’s ear. 

Alfred stops on his way out, and nods, his shoulders slumped. “You could,” he agrees. “Will you?”

They look at one another, and let the moment stretch. 

Then Bruce’s phone rings, and he flinches at the sound as though he’s just been slapped. He struggles to focus on the screen which displays Nisha Mulligan’s number, and for a moment, he doesn’t remember why he wanted to talk to her to begin with. His hand still trembles as he brings the phone up to his ear. 

“Hello?” 

“You’re alive,” Dr. Mulligan observes dryly, sounding none too pleased about it. “I got your text, Bruce. You wanted to talk to me about something?”

“Yes,” Bruce breathes out, remembering, and turns to the window, pressing a hard hand to his face. He closes his eyes so as not to see the reflection of Alfred quietly leaving the kitchen, taking his briefcase with him. “Yes, of course. Sorry.”

There’s silence on the other end, and then the doctor asks, “Are you all right? You sound shaken. What’s this about, Bruce? Has he done anything? Has he —”

“Joker’s fine,” Bruce assures her quickly, managing to find something resembling his normal voice at last. He takes another deep breath for good measure and orders himself to focus. “It’s not about that. You see, I had this idea and I need your go-ahead.”

“Oh boy,” Dr. Mulligan sighs. 

Bruce watches the rain hitting the windowpane, washing the grounds in chrome. He clears his throat. “Joker needs a whole bunch of permissions before he can leave city limits, right? Or at least I think I vaguely remember something like that being read out yesterday.”

“Right,” Nisha confirms, sounding deeply suspicious.

Bruce touches the glass. It’s cool, and helps him find his center again. Suddenly his plan seems far more urgent.

“Well,” he starts, “I already spoke to the District Attorney, and I was thinking…”

 

***

 

When he comes back upstairs about an hour and several more phone calls later he is still unsure what to do about the Alfred situation, but at least the conversations distracted him from it enough that he’s able to look at it with some distance. 

Only one thing is clear to him now: the discussion is far from over. He can recognize the validity of Alfred’s points but he’s absolutely not ready to give in, and he’s already lining up arguments for round two. Alfred has every right to feel unsafe but a gun is not the only solution by far, and Bruce is simply not going to accept it in the house. It’s hard enough not to take it as betrayal, and not to feel like he can’t trust Alfred anymore, which he logically knows is not true. Logic won’t stop him from remembering the sight of the briefcase every time he looks into Alfred’s eyes from now on. Logic won’t ease the hurt that rent his gut in half.

Alfred will not have the last word on this one.

Bruce is still far too shaken to revisit the topic now though, and for the moment, he takes some comfort in the fact that he’s reasonably sure that he’ll manage to pull off his plan. It never hurts to have people in positions of power owe you colossal favors, especially with election season looming close. Bruce wonders if he should feel guilty about calling it in, but the truth of it is that he doesn’t. He’s too hot with hope and nerves, and it settles into something gentler but no less complicated as he opens the bedroom door and steps into the red-tinged gloom.

Joker turns his head to greet him with a lazy, half-lidded smile, hugging the edge of Bruce’s cape to his chin.

“Hello, beautiful,” he drawls. 

He sounds warm with sleep, and looks it, too, disheveled hair falling over his dull, shadow-ringed eyes which struggle to focus on him. 

Bruce’s heart swells, and he wants to shake his head. Joker is the farthest thing from harmless. Still, Bruce can’t help but wonder if Alfred would still be this adamant about keeping a gun if he could see him like this, which is a dangerous thought that he should discard the moment he has it. 

So he tries. The sight still catches him somewhere warm and unexpected, melting some of the edge away, and he says “Hey” far too softly, with a smile he can’t quite — doesn’t want to — keep in. 

He picks his way over to the bed with only a twinge of hesitation, the guilt from this morning all but gone now, buried under a flaring urge to be close and to let Joker absorb him, distract him from everything else.

He thinks it might have always been like that between them. It’s just the means of distraction that have changed.

God, he’d been so blind.

“I thought you’d still be asleep,” he says, clearing his throat in a hope to hide some of the rawness that seizes him up. “It’s been what, seven hours? Eight?”

Joker stretches. Bruce watches him, fights with himself for all of half a heartbeat and then gives in to the impulse to run his fingers gently through his hair.

Joker closes his eyes and relaxes into his touch. “Has it really?” he hums. “Would you look at that.”

He doesn’t sound concerned. Bruce darts a quick glance to the vial of pills, and when he looks back to Joker, he finds him smiling with an edge that doesn’t look sleepy at all. 

“Think you might be building up a tolerance?” Bruce suggests as Joker pushes himself up and uncorks Alfred’s vial, the cape pooling in his lap. He shakes a pill out and swallows, then washes it down with water. He shrugs, setting the vial down. 

“Or maybe I was just too eager to see you again to stay asleep any longer,” he teases, and leans forward to reach for him. “Come here, big guy.”

Okay. Okay. Bruce can do that — gladly. He lets Joker tug him down onto the bed in silent relief, and shivers when chilled hands part his bathrobe.

It looks like Joker is gearing up for a little exploration, and Bruce wants to let him, by God, he _needs_ to let him. He’s so tired, and he needs this like burning.

“J.…”

“You’re so gorgeous, darling, do you know that? So perfect for me,” Joker whispers, running his hands down Bruce’s body. His eyes look dark, half-lidded like this, enthralled with what he sees. It’s almost uncomfortable in its own unique way, but also not at all, and Bruce can’t explain it but the intense focus and appreciation in Joker’s face make him feel self-conscious and thrilled all at once.

He shivers when Joker’s cold hands touch his chest. When they run a careful outline over his pectorals, his clavicle, his shoulders, and then down the center to his stomach. Joker’s tongue peeks out, licking over his scarred red mouth that looks almost black in the half-gloom. 

“J.,” Bruce tries again, struggling to ignore the way his stomach clenches. 

“Shhhhh now, baby. Let me take you in.”

“I need to talk to you,” Bruce whispers. “I’ve been on the phone with some people and —”

He hisses and jerks as Joker leans down to kiss the soft skin near his hip, then catches it between his teeth, biting down hard. He soothes the sensitive spot with a gentler kiss immediately and grins up at Bruce.

“You were saying?”

Bruce considers his options. “Later,” he decides.

Joker’s smirk tilts to one side. “That’s what I thought. Now, I mean to enjoy you properly, so why don’t you lie down like a good boy and think of Gotham.”

Bruce doesn’t want to think of Gotham. If he does, he’ll be forced to think about what people will say, about his own guilt, about Jim and Barbara and Jason and a city marked with blood from Joker’s hand. 

About Alfred and his new gun, and the sad, sad look in his eyes. 

The memory agitates something dark and heavy in his stomach, and he’s tired of it. He’s fed up with shouldering it all day in and day out, and never getting any rest from the noise in his own head. There’ll be time to go back to it when they leave this room, which will be far too soon. 

Right now he wants to be selfish, and to rest, and let himself enjoy a victory no one thought possible. 

So instead of Gotham he chooses to think about Joker’s mouth kissing a hot trail down his body; his hands, following, outlining his muscles with delicacy that borders on worship; the heat of his breath, and the slow slide of his smooth legs against Bruce’s. 

He manages to keep still when Joker’s fingers undo the cord of the bathrobe and push the material to the sides, and when they hook over the waistband of his boxers, then dip in, inching the material down his hips. There’s a brief moment of sobering panic when he remembers Joker’s sharp teeth, but then —

“Hello there,” Joker breathes, and Bruce simply _has_ to look. He pushes himself up on his elbows just in time to catch Joker’s enraptured expression as he gazes at Bruce’s cock, which is already half-hard again and still swelling. “’Bout time we got properly introduced.”

He smirks up at Bruce and then leans down to gently kiss the shaft. Bruce shudders, but keeps watching as delicate but assured fingers stroke along his length. “You’re a fine specimen, aren’t you?” Joker whispers to Bruce’s cock with all the tenderness of a 1940’s film star wooing his onscreen partner. “We got to meet one another last night but it wasn’t exactly proper, now was it? The pleasure is all mine, lil’ Batsy.”

“Are you seriously talking to my dick right now?” Bruce demands, and is proud of himself for managing this much coherence through the toe-curling waves of pleasure from Joker’s hand. Jesus, his grip is just right, just firm enough without hurting, and Joker’s so confident about it, not a hint of hesitation… 

“Of course.” Joker leaves another short, sweet kiss near the head, and Bruce bites down on a groan. “Lil Batsy is a sensitive soul. And you’re my favorite Batsy now, do you know that?” he coos to Bruce’s cock. “You’re so good. So perfect. We’re gonna be so happy together, you and I.” 

“Oh my God,” Bruce whines, and that’s just about all he manages because Joker’s mouth fits gently along his length now, trailing kisses up and down. 

“Such a good boy, you are,” Joker murmurs sweetly, one hand stroking Bruce, the other digging blunted nails into the skin of Bruce’s thigh. “So good. And all mine now.”

“Joker —”

Before Bruce can even think about stopping him — and once again he remembers about the teeth, far, far too late — Joker leans down to take Bruce’s entire length into his mouth in one go, his impossibly flexible lips stretching around the shaft with ease, and he sighs in pleasure as though this is everything he could possibly want. Bruce’s eyes roll into the back of his head, and his elbows go weak, but he keeps himself upright somehow — he has to. If he loses just a second of the vision in front of him now he might just die.

Of course, it feels like dying anyway when Joker holds on to the root of his cock in a steady grip and slowly moves his mouth up Bruce’s length, flicking his tongue over the head. He gives it a long lick, and then another, and another, slow and reverent like Bruce’s taste is a delicacy; like this is something far too good to be rushed. His mouth fits around him firmly right up until he’s drawing up to gaze at Bruce’s tip, and he kisses it, then gives the head a long, long lick, hums in approval and moves his mouth down again for more like he just can’t get enough.

And Bruce watches him with his mouth hanging open, because while he’s received blowjobs before he can’t remember any of his partners looking this genuinely _happy_ about it. Not even Selina, who seemed to enjoy it more for the power it gave her over Bruce and for his reactions than anything else. Certainly it was not for the taste itself, not the… physicality of it, and Bruce was fine with that. It’s always felt amazing to _him_ but he knew that it can’t have tasted good, and he can admit that cocks tend to be kind of weird and off-putting overall, and he can’t imagine that he’d be very enthusiastic about it himself…

But Joker?

Joker _is_ enthusiastic. And yes, Bruce has no doubts that part of it is the power kick. But it’s not only that, and it’s obvious from the way Joker holds onto the base of Bruce’s cock like he never wants to let go; from the shockingly gentle, loving caresses of his mouth and tongue; from his dark, heavy-lidded eyes and the pleased little noises he keeps making like he’s finally allowed to delight in his favorite treat. He looks like he’s loving every single second of it, and Bruce can’t tear his eyes away from him. Not even when he’s making little strangled noises of his own, and his body squirms, and tension builds steadily in his lower gut — he doesn’t want to miss a second of this. There’s no doubt or fear in him anymore, not now, not when Joker is treating his body with all the love and near religious reverence he never seems to hold for anything else, and Bruce knows that he shouldn’t have worried; Joker won’t hurt him. Not in this moment. Here and now, watching him, Bruce trusts him with the most vulnerable part of his body, and knows implicitly that he can. 

When Joker looks up at him — just a glance from under his lashes, the hint of a smirk — it’s like he can tell exactly what Bruce is thinking. He leans down to whisper a tender “Shhhh, it’s all right, I got you now” into the skin of Bruce’s abdomen before diving in again for another taste, and God, Bruce can feel Joker’s throat vibrate when the tip of his cock brushes against it but Joker doesn’t seem bothered by that at all. He just keeps sucking, kissing, licking — and making those rumbly, purring noises — and stroking Bruce’s thigh affectionately, and —

His legs are moving against Bruce’s now. Something heavy and hot and hard brushes over his calf in regular, excruciating slides up and down in time with the rhythm of Joker’s mouth. 

It’s too much. It’s all — too much. Bruce collapses on the pillow and fixes his eyes on the ceiling, and breathes, and furiously concentrates on not coming as he feels Joker’s mouth and tongue working their magic on him and Joker’s cock pressing against his calf with easy shamelessness Bruce could never imitate. 

Bruce is still making noises, which he only registers distantly. He couldn’t keep them in now if he tried, and he thinks Joker wouldn’t want him to. It’s not like he can focus on that, anyway. His entire world narrows down to two points, and the waves of pleasure in his cock and Joker’s body moving hot and heavy against him is everything he can think about. 

He closes his eyes, letting it overcome him. Surrendering. Letting himself feel.

Until —

“Pull my hair,” Joker pleads softly, before capturing Bruce’s cock into his mouth all the way to the base. He comes back up slowly, licking his way up as he does, and whispers, “Please.”

It’s a struggle to bring himself back down from the daze Joker’s worked him into. Bruce lifts his head. “J.?”

“Hard,” Joker breathes, and when he catches the leaking head of Bruce’s cock between his lips, this time there’s a hint of teeth grazing against Bruce’s skin. 

“Okay,” Bruce whispers.

And he does. He twists both hands in Joker’s hair and pulls at fistfuls of stiff-soft green curls, and Joker moans around his cock, and his hips rock down against Bruce. And again. And again. Joker’s mouth tightens over Bruce’s hot skin, speeding up, the tip now hitting the back of his throat with every move, and God, Bruce won’t be able to take it much longer. His balls are already drawing up tight, and tension is coiling in his lower back like a snake ready to spring, and he’s so close…

“Let go,” Joker whispers, the words a hot breath of air around Bruce’s skin. His hand lets go of the base of Bruce’s cock and he braces himself on Bruce’s thighs. “Come on, baby.”

Bruce looks at him helplessly, panting. He searches Joker’s face and finds nothing but readiness, and a curious sort of calm, and… 

He grabs Joker’s hair tighter to keep his head in place and fucks himself up into his mouth.

He’s coming in five hot thrusts, and the sheer relief of it makes him see white for a second as the tension of the morning releases out of him and into Joker, who’s ready to take it, who keeps himself open for him, making strangled little noises as he stills completely and, with his eyes closed, accepts everything. 

He’s still caressing Bruce’s cock with little kisses and licks when when it falls out, the tip resting on Joker’s bottom lip, and he smiles up at Bruce with cum dripping from his mouth. 

“J.,” Bruce whispers, and doesn’t have the breath for anything else. 

Joker holds his eye for what feels like an age, still smiling that odd, slightly dazed smile; and then, just as Bruce recovers his senses enough to realize that Joker didn’t come, he shimmies up Bruce’s body fast and swift and plants a deep, open-mouthed kiss on Bruce’s mouth. 

As soon as the bitter taste spills on his tongue Bruce sputters, and Joker pulls away, straddling his chest and grinning like he’s just pulled the prank of his life. “Enjoying the taste?” he asks hoarsely, bouncing a little, his balls brushing Bruce’s stomach, his slender white cock bobbing in place, and as Bruce glances at it he realizes that the area around it has been shaved smooth, no wiry green hair he remembers from the recording in sight. 

He couldn’t see it last night in the dark, and wonders just when Joker managed to get a razor. His legs have been shaved, too. He should ask about that.

Later.

“Jesus, J.” Bruce wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and then again when the foul taste still lingers. His hand trembles as he does. “That’s disgusting,” he manages.

“Keep that up and you won’t be getting another blowjob for the foreseeable future,” Joker threatens, still in that raw, abused voice. “You taste delicious, honey. Embrace it.”

Bruce resolves right then and there to eat more fruit. Damn, but the taste is sharp, and he gazes up at Joker with awe, shaking his head. 

“How can you even —”

Joker leans in and kisses him on the cheek, and then, catching Bruce by surprise, he moves to his lips and licks off the remaining cum. “I love you,” he says simply, and pats Bruce’s cheek.

There’s nothing Bruce can say to that. He collapses against the headboard, dazed and disarmed, and lets Joker slide off him and then off the bed, bringing the cape around himself. 

“Don’t you want to…” he starts weakly, gesturing to Joker’s crotch.

Joker’s smile changes into something gentler, and he shakes his head. “Where’s my room?”

Bruce blinks. “Your room?” he parrots. “So you don’t want to…”

“Of course I do,” Joker parries, clutching Bruce’s cape close to his chest, “but I want to freshen up. You did prepare a room for me, didn’t you?”

“Oh.” Bruce runs a hand over his face, willing himself to get back to reality. “Yeah, we did. Most of your things are already there.”

He gets to his feet — somewhat precariously — and tucks himself back into the boxers. He shrugs back into the bathrobe. He’s reluctant to leave the bedroom, but…

“This way.”

He leads the way out and down the corridor, and Joker jogs up to him, still wrapped up in the cape — and still stark naked underneath — and laces his fingers with Bruce’s. Bruce squeezes his hand back and swallows, hoping to God that they don’t run into Alfred.

“By the way, I hope you’re not too attached to this thing because I’m keeping it,” Joker announces.

Bruce shoots him an amused look, and can’t quite keep his eyes from lingering on Joker’s mouth. There’s still flecks of white on it. “The cape?”

“Yup! I have a whole collection of bits I managed to tear off you over the years, but I’ve always wanted the whole thing.”

“How… romantic.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Joker squeezes his hand.

“Why would you want my cape?”

Joker tilts his head like Bruce is the one being unreasonable. “Why wouldn’t I?” he asks, and pointedly licks the last of Bruce’s cum off his lips.

Bruce gives up. This cape is Lucius’s latest and, if Bruce is any judge, his best, but he’ll just ask for a new one. This is not a fight he wants to get into, and if he gets more moments of Joker wrapped in the cape out it, he thinks he won’t mind too much. 

He pushes open the door to the room they’ve picked for Joker and steps to the side.

“If you don’t like this one you can pick any other room you want,” he says as Joker breezes past him and inside, “except for Dick and Jason’s rooms. Those are off limits.”

“You’ll have to point them out to me then,” Joker says distractedly, heading straight for the dresser and examining the creams and cosmetics left there in an open cardboard box. 

“Sure.” Bruce watches for a bit as Joker goes through the cosmetics, and then offers, “Do you want any help with… do you need…”

“Baby?” Joker says calmly, his back to Bruce.

“Yes?”

“Lilac.”

“Oh.” Bruce swallows, his face falling. He rests his weight against the door jamb. “Okay. Well.” He clears his throat, conflicted. “Do you want me to wait outside?”

Joker turns to face him, and there’s a hard, challenging glint in his eye when he says, “How about I meet you down in the library when I’m ready? I might be a while.”

Bruce searches his face, and for a moment, the tension in the room brims like it wants to push him past the threshold on its own.

Joker smiles. “You can’t watch me every second of every day, darling.”

Bruce takes another second or two to study him. 

Then, very slowly, he backs out of the room and closes the door with a click. 

He then stands there for a bit just listening, but whatever Joker’s doing inside he’s being quiet about it, and there are no signs of a tantrum or panic attack or anything else violent.

Bruce stands there for two more minutes anyway, thinking hard.

And then he gives up and strides right back to his own bedroom.

Joker’s right. Bruce can’t watch him 24/7. And while he can’t bring himself to feel the same kind of trust now that he felt when Joker’s mouth was around his cock, he knows he’ll have to start somewhere, and Joker deserves a chance to earn it. With Bruce and with…

Alfred. 

God, Bruce needs another shower.

 

***

 

It’s another hour and a half before Joker emerges. Bruce is just finishing up another phone call with Nisha and loses steam mid-word when he sees him, clean and fresh in fitted dark purple trousers and the same yellow shirt he wore the evening Bruce laid his heart bare to him. 

It’s buttoned up now, the sleeves rolled up to Joker’s elbows. His hair is combed and styled, and his face made up, and somehow in the dull glow of the late rainy afternoon it looks softer, a different kind of white than when it was just his mutilated skin without any powder or concealer smoothening it. 

He makes for the piano, where he sits, leaning his elbow against the lid over the keyboard. He smiles at Bruce, and his lips gleam red, thick with lipstick.

Bruce only hears Nisha’s voice calling him when she all but yells into the speaker.

“Sorry,” he tells her over a dry throat, “got distracted.”

Joker grins and rearranges himself to lounge against the piano in an obscenely suggestive way, legs falling open. Bruce kicks him. 

“Is he there?” Nisha wonders when Joker giggles loud enough for her to hear. 

“Yeah, he just walked in. Can I count on you with the attorneys?”

She sighs, sounding pained. “I’ll need to talk to him first. And you both need to talk to his social worker and his parole officer.”

“Okay, but will you —”

“I’ll decide after I hear from them and from the patient.”

“That’s fair,” Bruce concedes. 

“Who’s that?” Joker wants to know, and Bruce turns away from him.

“Keep me posted,” Nisha asks, “and have him call me when he gets his phone. Has he got it yet?”

“Not yet. I’ll be in touch, doc.”

She hangs up as though she couldn’t wait to be done with this conversation. Not that Bruce can blame her.

He turns back to Joker. “It was your doctor, you absolute menace. Here.” He makes for the desk and grabs the white gift box, then puts it on top of the piano. “For you.”

“It’s too early for an anniversary gift,” Joker observes, but he lunges for the box anyway and opens it without ceremony. 

“Wayne tech,” Bruce explains quietly as Joker takes out the sleek purple-cased smartphone and balances it on his hand. “It’s already hooked to our wifi. There’s instructions in the box. Everything you do on it will be monitored by the police, but…”

Joker is already turning the thing on and tapping in the code from the box.

He starts swiping and tapping almost immediately, filling the quiet library with the screech of default ringtones. Bruce gives him a moment to play before he clears his throat. “My number is already in there,” he says, “as is Alfred’s and Nisha’s. Your social worker is there too. You’ll have to call him every other day.”

“Are your birdboys in there too?” Joker asks.

Bruce frowns but Joker’s face stays clear, eyes peeled to the screen. 

“No,” he says emphatically, “and they’re not going to be.”

“Gordon?”

“You’re not calling Gordon.”

“Barb—”

“Don’t.”

Joker glances up at him, smiling coldly, and Bruce’s hands ball into fists. “Don’t do that,” he whispers. 

Joker’s smile grows, showing teeth. This is probably exactly the reaction he was going for, and Bruce thinks longingly back to the master bedroom and the tender, loving man who worshiped him with his mouth. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to keep up with Joker’s moods, and how much it will cost him to try.

“Keep it with you,” Bruce instructs. “If any of us call and you don’t answer there’ll be trouble.”

“How ominous,” Joker opines with the same wide, predatory grin. “And naturally this doohickey can tell all the interested parties where I am?”

“Yes.” There’s no point trying to sugarcoat it. “If you use it for anything suspicious, I’ll know.”

“That’s my boy!” Joker stretches on the sofa, giggling to himself. The sound comes out with an edge Bruce doesn’t like. “You’ve got this thing wired to transmit whatever I do on it, I take it?”

Bruce nods.

“Splendid. I’ll make sure to only pirate the good stuff for your viewing pleasure.”

Bruce brings a hand to his forehead. “J.,” he sighs, “you know you can’t pirate anything. If they catch you at it you’re going back to jail. Besides, why would you even want to pirate anything? I can just buy it for you.”

“Now where’s the fun in that?” Joker challenges, but his smile turns playful, and Bruce surrenders to the joke. “On that note, darling,” Joker starts, turning back to his phone, “do I get my own bank account?”

Bruce studies him for a moment. “You’ll get one after the first probation period,” he says slowly. “Nisha must have told you. For now, your expenses go through your parole officer.” 

Joker gives a vague hum, obviously losing all interest in the conversation, or pretending to. Bruce watches him play on the phone for another moment or so before he grabs the newspaper and makes space for himself on the other end of the couch, pushing Joker’s legs off.

“Here,” he says, offering him the newspaper. “Take a look at this and tell me what you think.”

“Oooooh, did we make the front page?” Joker enthuses, dropping the phone to the floor — Bruce winces and hopes the case is as sturdy as Lucius promised it would be — and pulling the paper to himself. He chuckles as he scans the article and when his eyes lift to Bruce again they glow with enough mischief to remind Bruce of pogo sticks and giant chickens and grand balloon escapes. 

“So what’s the big plan?” Joker asks, lifting his legs to rest them easily over Bruce’s lap. “What story are we going with?”

Bruce can’t help but smile. “How do you know there even is a story?” 

“Oh come now, don’t be insulting. Your plan B’s have plan B’s. Of course you thought of something to tell the teeming masses. Now, regale me: what sort of sordid romance are we cooking up?”

He seems genuinely excited by the idea, and it seems to take years off his face, so much so that Bruce lets his smile settle into place, oddly charmed. His hands rest over Joker’s bare feet, squeezing. “Well,” he starts. “I thought we could tell them that I simply… took a shine to you while you lived here.”

Joker is nodding, letting the newspaper rustle in his grip as he all but forgets about it. “You fell madly in love with my charm and charisma and mysterious allure,” he supplies. “You pined and pined for me, tying yourself up in knots over how inappropriate it was.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “No need to make it so melodramatic.”

“Are you kidding? There’s every need! Besides, it’s not like it’d be a lie,” Joker points out.

Bruce swats his foot. “I did not _pine_.”

“Yes you did, darling. You pined awfully. Or shall I remind you you actually got me roses for Valentine’s day?”

“That doesn’t mean I pined. You weren’t even there to see —”

“I know you well enough to imagine all the grand tortured pacing and brooding and sighing just fine, thank you. You do the tragic hero act well enough to put young Werther to shame. Incidentally, that’s a compliment.”

“To you, it probably is,” Bruce comments. His fingers are sketching absent-minded patterns over the skin of Joker’s bare foot. It’s smooth, like it’s been covered in cream. “I thought we could say that I first let you stay on to help with the transition, and that we could add the relationship angle later,” he murmurs.

“No, no, no, no, no, this won’t do at all,” Joker protests, one foot coming to kick lightly on Bruce’s thigh. “Come on, we gotta keep the pining. We gotta, Brucie! And we need to add a bit of drama in there, too.”

“Isn’t the pining drama enough?” Bruce points out. “I should think the entire situation, with your history of crime and your status as a prisoner —”

“We have to turn it into a love triangle between you, me and Batman.”

Bruce stares at him. It takes him a moment to realize his mouth is hanging open. “No.”

“Yes!” Joker is sitting up, pulling his legs away from Bruce to fold them under himself, kneeling up on the couch. “Come on, baby, just picture it! It’s the only way to make it believable.”

Bruce snorts. “What happened to your charm and charisma?”

“Not believable for _you_ ,” Joker counters, “believable for me. Everyone in the city knows how I feel about Batman. They’re not gonna buy that I settled for Bruce Wayne.”

“ _Settled_?”

“So we need to make it believable. We need to spin it as a tragic love story wherein I’m torn between my one true love and a new flame entering the picture. Of course we can play up your own boyish charm and naivete and stunning good looks, and you’d be vying so hard for my attention so as to turn my head. For that, you need to start courting me while I’m still locked up in here.” 

“We are not spinning it as a love triangle,” Bruce protests. “No one would believe that. I’m not gonna pretend that I was in competition with myself.”

“But it would make your secret identity all the more secret,” Joker argues. “Like I said, everyone in Gotham knows how much I love Batman. If they see me on _your_ arm instead people might get suspicious.”

“I think you’re grossly overestimating how the general public reads our history,” Bruce mutters. “No one thinks there’s any romance there.”

“I bet you a fiver they do.”

“I’m not betting on that with you.”

“Killjoy.”

“Can’t we just…” Bruce groans, massaging his forehead. “Can’t we just play it like a normal, gradual attraction? It’s not gonna make sense to people any way you spin it. But it’ll still make more sense to admit that we just fell for one another slowly and only came to realize it once you started living here properly. Plus, this way I don’t come out of it looking like I’ve taken advantage.”

“Oh, but haven’t you?” Joker prods, eyes gleaming, and the question slices sharp underneath the playfulness.

Bruce studies his face. “Do you think I did?”

“Well, let’s see.” Joker settles back down and starts to list off on his fingers. “I couldn’t see anyone else but you. You wooed me with movies and popcorn and flowers and dates in the gardens. You flirted with me so obviously the guards were uncomfortable with it. You danced with me at Christmas. You got me clothes and food and drink. And that’s only what you did as charming Brucie. Shall I go on?” 

“Joker.”

“I still say we go for the love triangle.”

“No.”

“The pining, then. The pining must stay. But Brucie, you were planning on using the guards as witnesses to corroborate it, right?”

“Well.” Bruce frowns. “Yes.” 

“And we have the Future’s Hope guys, too. Naturally. The thing is though, darling, you were being pretty obvious.”

“I was trying to,” Bruce confesses. “When I came to you as Wayne after our… talk… I was already trying to —”

“Not just as Wayne, sweetheart.” Joker’s smile is gentle enough to touch on cloying. “As Batman, too.”

Bruce sighs. “Don’t exaggerate.”

“I’m not, but think about it. All that time Batman spent with me, all that concern, all those card games and touching, not to mention all the times you came to me unsupervised —”

Bruce sits up straight. Joker’s eyes are steady, amused and just a bit smug. 

“I only had one unsupervised visit with you,” Bruce tells him. “The night when we made our deal. That’s it.”

“Again with the insults to my intelligence,” Joker sighs, shaking his head ruefully. His eyes gleam. “I know for a fact you sent the guards away far more often than that.”

Bruce swallows. “You have no way of knowing that.”

Joker examines his nails in mock-nonchalance, shrugging. “I know they weren’t watching that time you washed my hair,” he says easily, and grins when Bruce’s face goes still. “One only has to remember the big deal they made out of the no touching rule in the past. When I took your hand and no one descended on us in righteous fury, it became rather obvious to me that you chased them off so we could indulge in a little bit of privacy. That was very romantic of you, by the way.”

“I could have convinced them not to interfere,” Bruce counters, and it sounds weak even to his own ears.

“That you could, that you could,” Joker agrees, nodding, “but after that, twice a week when you visited, the cameras stopped moving. They would move to follow me around the room when the guards were there at any other time. It didn’t took a genius to notice the pattern and realize you got us two hours of privacy a week, you sly devil, you,” Joker finishes with a flourish, smoothing a fond hand over Bruce’s hair. “From their perspective, God only knows what the two of us got up to when they weren’t looking. Like I said.” He sits back cross legged, facing Bruce and looking extremely pleased with himself. “Quite obvious.”

Bruce stares at him some more, calculating, and is torn between wanting to yell at Joker — or himself, for that matter — or to kiss him stupid. 

Joker settles the question for him by grinning in triumph and climbing into his lap to stroke his face and kiss his cheek. 

“It’s okay, baby,” he murmurs. “No need to look so spooked. You’re not the only one in this house with more than two brain cells to rub together.”

Bruce sighs, trying to relax under Joker’s affections. He confesses, “I feel like an idiot.”

“As you should. Let this be a lesson. You don’t know everything, and remember this, too: I knew they weren’t watching and I chose not to do anything about it,” Joker reminds him, and the words gain on a hard note that the sweetness doesn’t quite cover. “Now, as for our sordid love story —”

“We can hammer out the details later,” Bruce decides. “I did have one other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?” Joker smiles, resting his head in the crook of Bruce’s neck. He kisses it and hums contentedly when Bruce brings his arms around him to gather him up close. “Come on, handsome, lay it on me.” 

He keeps giving Bruce little kisses — his neck, his shoulder, his chest, like he’s trying to soothe the sting of his own words. Bruce gives himself a moment to enjoy it, holding him close.

And then he asks, “How would you like to go away for a while?”

Joker gazes up at him quizzically. “Go where?”

“I don’t know yet.” Bruce shrugs, his thumb rubbing a circle into Joker’s shoulder. “Away. Out of Gotham. Just for a week or two.”

“Brucie,” Joker accuses. “What are you cooking up in that bat-brain of yours?”

Bruce closes his eyes and kisses the top of his head, smelling acid and lemony soap. 

“We could both use a holiday together,” he murmurs into it. 

“Like a honeymoon?”

Bruce smiles. “Sure. Like a honeymoon.”

“You’d seriously leave Gotham to all manner of mayhem and mischief just to spend two weeks of debauchery with yours truly?” Joker cocks his head at him, disbelieving. 

Bruce looks into his eyes, and finds the courage to touch his hand to Joker’s cheek. He strokes it as he says, “I could find someone to watch over Gotham when I’m gone.”

“Why, Mr. Wayne, I can hardly believe my own ears.” A lazy grin spills over Joker’s face as he leans easily into Bruce’s touch. “Was the sex really as good as to lure you away from your path of obnoxious righteousness? Goodness gracious, I’m so flattered I feel like someone should spring from under the rug and give me a prize.”

Bruce bears the brunt of it with relative good grace, and then points out, “You haven’t answered my question.”

“Darling, I would love to elope with you,” Joker proclaims with much ceremony. “But there is this tiny matter of my not being allowed outside the city.”

“I’ve been… taking care of that,” Bruce explains. “It’s possible that they’ll grant you permission to leave with me for two weeks as long as you keep the bracelet on. We’re working it out.”

There’s a beat of silence. Bruce watches Joker’s face carefully and Joker considers him in turn, eyes darting between Bruce’s. His grin falters, replaced by something far more thoughtful. 

“Are you now?” Joker asks finally, without any sort of inflection that would clue Bruce in as to how he actually feels about the idea. “You decided to start on it without making sure I’d even want to go?”

“Just in case,” Bruce explains. There’s a hard glint in Joker’s eye he doesn’t like, and he looks away, to Joker’s hand sat idly over his chest. “I wanted to get things moving as soon as possible. Of course we’d call the whole thing off if you said no.”

Joker contemplates that. “What sort of date do you have in mind?”

“If all goes well we’d leave next week. Monday.”

Joker lets out a sharp, jolting snatch of laughter, startling Bruce. “Batsy,” he says, “has it at any point occurred to you that, now that I’m legally allowed to walk the fine streets of Gotham again, I might want to spend some time actually walking them? That I missed it?”

Bruce holds his breath, trying to not let his face fall. “If you don’t want to go —”

“I do,” Joker assures him, leaning in to kiss the corner of Bruce’s mouth. Bruce has the uncomfortable feeling that he’s being appeased. “I’m rather impressed, really,” Joker murmurs into his skin. “It seems that I’m a bad influence on you already. Look at you, scheming to skive off work. Do I get to choose where we’ll go?”

“Sure,” Bruce allows, sighing. “Why not? It can be anywhere, just… not Metropolis.”

“Don’t worry, I’m in no rush to visit the Shining City anytime soon.” Joker grins again. “Map, please!”

He jumps to his feet then, and loathe as he is to let him to, Bruce follows, and procures a decent-sized map which he then lays out on the floor at Joker’s urging. Joker regards it thoughtfully, and then crouches at it, demanding, “Pen.”

“Am I going to regret this?” Bruce wonders, handing him one.

“Only if you’re very attached to this here piece of paper,” Joker tells him. “No? Fabulous.”

He covers his eyes with one hand. Then he brings his other arm up, wielding the pen like a dagger to stab the map so hard Bruce flinches. 

“One for sorrow… two for joy,” Joker hums as he stabs it again at _two_ , in a different place, the tip of the pen tearing right through paper. “Three for a girl,” another forceful stab, “four for a boy.” And another. “Five for silver.” Stab. “Six for gold.” Stab. “Seven for a secret…”

“Never to be told,” Bruce murmurs with him, wincing when the last stab lands on _told_.

“Let’s see.” Joker peeks through his finger, giggling a tad breathlessly, and Bruce slides down to crouch on the floor next to him. “It would seem that we will be vacationing…”

He starts connecting the holes he made at no discernible pattern, drawing random lines between all eight of them until he decides, “… somewhere in the middle of the North Sea. Hope you held on to your scuba gear!”

Bruce squints at the spot Joker’s hand stopped at. He considers. “All right, how about…” 

He takes Joker’s hand by the wrist and gently steers it to the left until it lands on Scotland. 

“That’s cheating,” Joker accuses. 

“But it’ll be drier,” Bruce points out.

“In Scotland this time of year? Have you _been_ there?”

“Have you?” Bruce questions, genuinely interested. 

“Maybe. I don’t remember.”

“You’ve traveled though, haven’t you?”

“Obviously.” Joker grins at him. “And fought you on most of my trips abroad. That was all business.”

“Okay,” Bruce concedes, remembering some of their more spectacular encounters outside Gotham. He smiles at the memory of Jason following him in Dick’s old costume all the way to Guatemala, marking his debut as Robin by kicking Joker square in the face. 

Still one of his fondest memories.

“What about not-business then? Have you ever gone anywhere just to rest?”

“Metropolis,” Joker admits, “though it’s far too bright and clean there for my tastes. Have you seen their sidewalks? You could eat right off them, I’d wager, and not come down with anything too lethal. Disgusting, I tell you.” He shudders. “A few other places… They do rather love me in Paris. Now there’s a city one can sink one’s teeth into!”

“We could go to Paris,” Bruce offers, intrigued, but Joker is shaking his head. 

“It would be unwise,” he judges. “You wouldn’t like the crowd I hang out with. No, we must listen to the pen.”

“The pen that says we gotta spend two weeks under the North Sea.”

“Scotland is close enough, I suppose,” Joker acquiesces graciously. “I imagine I could find us a kitschy rustic cabin somewhere picturesque. Just leave it to me, Sugarbutt.”

“I’m not answering to Sugarbutt,” Bruce tells him with all the sternness he can muster, but Joker is not listening to him anymore. Alight with purpose, he scampers back to the couch to grab his phone, and then sprawls on his stomach on the floor, across the map, and starts tapping. 

Bruce watches him for a moment, and then decides, All right then.

He walks over to the desk, retrieves a tablet from the drawer, and makes his way back to the floor next to Joker. Leaning his back against the couch, stretching out his legs, he turns the tablet on and logs into his own private server.

Files from his current open cases pop up in neat order, and he selects one at random. He settles back against the couch, making himself comfortable, and smiles when Joker shifts position to rest against his legs. 

Rain patters against the tall windows behind them. The grandfather clock ticks time away. Bruce watches Joker laid out next to him, engrossed in his phone, and lets out a deep, deep breath. 

As far as little steps go, he thinks, for now, they seem to be doing okay.

 

***

 

They spend the afternoon like this, Bruce working, Joker looking for a suitable place for their holiday and urging Bruce to check out this and that offer. It’s far more peaceful than it has any right to be, with Joker only limiting himself to a few cruel remarks Bruce finds it easy enough to overlook, right up until Alfred pushes his way into the library with a salad tray.

As soon as he walks in, Bruce focuses furiously on his tablet. He doesn’t have it in him to face Alfred right now. 

Joker though has no such qualms and is on his feet instantly, offering to help. Alfred bears his enthusiasm with stiff, chilly dignity, commenting, “Since you skipped dinner last night and didn’t seem to have touched your breakfast, I decided to step in.”

Bruce’s stomach gives a sharp lurch as he glances to Joker. He looks at the clock, and the lurch only tugs harder. 

Jesus, if Alfred is right and Joker never touched his breakfast that means he hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon. And Bruce hasn’t even noticed.

“Don’t you worry about me, Mr. Pennyworth, sir,” Joker assures him with an ingratiating smile. “I need to maintain my girlish figure. Thank you ever so much all the same, and I am _so_ sorry about last night, I’m sure whatever you prepared for us was absolutely divine.”

“It was,” Alfred agrees dryly. “No matter; I shall just reheat it for you tonight.”

Joker is nodding so hard his head might just fall off. “Yes, yes, absolutely, I wouldn’t have it any other way. And this time I won’t let your scoundrel of a son distract me from the feast.”

Bruce sighs, and decides not point out that it was Joker who distracted _him_. The last thing either of them needs is any more reminders of what Bruce and Joker got up to last night, especially now that Bruce is once again thinking about Alfred’s briefcase. 

“Reheated will be fine, Alfred, thank you,” he says coldly, and ignores Joker’s intrigued look along with Alfred’s pained one. “I’ll make sure he eats it this time.”

“The blind leading the blinder,” Alfred mutters, not quite under his breath. “It’s also time for your medication, Master John. I took the liberty of bringing it with me.”

“How kind of you,” Joker says, and it might have even sounded sincere if one wasn’t paying attention. 

Bruce looks up in time to watch Alfred pass him the little tray with pills on it. Joker takes them, then smiles up at Alfred with a quiet “Thank you.”

Alfred doesn’t answer. His gaze falls on the vandalized map. “And what fresh hell is this?”

“Oh, didn’t Brucie tell you? We’re going on holiday,” Joker informs him happily.

Alfred’s face freezes, and he looks to Bruce. “Are you really.”

Bruce meets his gaze with a cold, steady one of his own. “Yes,” he confirms. “We’ll be leaving as soon as Joker gets the clearance.”

“How… nice,” Alfred says slowly, and Bruce has no doubt that he catches onto the layers of subtext behind Bruce’s statement. “And where, pray tell, are you going?”

“The land of kilts, sheep and haggis!” Joker exclaims. “Sloping hills! Romantic poetry! Bagpipe music and the Loch Ness monster and the brave of heart! Say, Mr. Pennyworth, I’ve got a few spots narrowed down, would you like to take a look at them and help us choose the best one?”

Alfred looks momentarily stunned. “Well, I…”

“I’m sure Alfred is far too busy for that,” Bruce interjects, glaring at the tablet without seeing a word. “Aren’t you, Alfred?”

He doesn’t look up, but he can still feel the combined stares of the both of them, Alfred and Joker, like the heat of the sun on his skin. In the silence, the steady rhythm of rain seems to fill every corner in the room.

“As a matter of fact,” Alfred decides at length, “I am not. I feel it is my duty to make sure that the two of you find something that won’t collapse at the first gust of wind. Master John, why don’t we relocate to the table so you can show me your picks?”

Bruce’s head snaps up. Alfred meets his eyes with steel in his. Joker is looking between the both of them with his eyes wide like a spectator in a tennis match, but then he grins, and winks at Bruce as he follows Alfred to the big table by the window.

Which is how Bruce finds himself sitting there on the floor with the tablet in his lap, listening as his surrogate father and his psychopathic clown lover pore over holiday cottage offers. Every now and then Alfred mutters a comment that has Joker throwing his head back and filling the library with peals of laughter so loud Bruce imagines it must disturb the bats in the cave below; and every time it happens Alfred catches his eye, and Bruce is hopelessly, utterly lost.

This is without a doubt one of the most bizarre moments in his life, and he’s fought aliens that looked like tentacles with fur.

He doesn’t miss the statement Alfred is trying to make. He just doesn’t know if he can accept it for the olive branch it is, not with the memory of the briefcase still hot and raw between them. He can’t quite reconcile this show of good will with the fact that Alfred went behind his back and bought a gun in case he has to _kill Joker_. 

He looks away to his tablet, pinching the bridge of his nose and wishing — he doesn’t even know what for. For things to be goddamn easy for once. But that’s not the life he’s chosen for himself, as Alfred is ever keen to remind him, and…

He doesn’t even know if he’d be able to settle for easy.

Still, eas _ier_ would be pretty fucking nice every once in a while.

The scene gets even more surreal when Alfred pointedly draws Joker and Bruce’s attention to the salads he’s prepared and refuses to say another word until both of them clear their plates. Joker accepts easily enough and simply carries his bowl over to the table so they can keep browsing. Alfred makes an appalled face when Joker tries to talk with his mouth full, but doesn’t comment, and at this point Bruce desperately needs to excuse himself because there’s something desperate bubbling in him that he isn’t sure he’ll manage to hold in.

He won’t leave Alfred alone with Joker though, so he stays put, and gets up to walk it off as he paces around the room and starts on followup phone calls. He tries not to look over to the table as he does. He doesn’t trust himself to. 

Jesus, and this is only day two.

Which, he remembers, is far from over, as there’s one more thing on his agenda that he’d rather get through today than put off. It’s gonna be difficult enough as it is. Better get to it now, before the temptation to stall wins over and adds to the rift of trust issues already there between him and Joker. 

If Alfred can make a statement, then, goddammit, so can Bruce.

He waits until Alfred finally excuses himself, claiming that he needs to get back to the kitchen — but not before Joker makes him promise that they’ll continue where they left off tomorrow — and gives himself a moment to settle down. 

He doesn’t miss the shrewd way Joker is eyeing him, and isn’t surprised when Joker asks, “So what was that all about?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bruce tells him, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Did you two have a domestic?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Honey, I very nearly froze into a block of ice for all the chill between you two. It’s obviously bothering you.” Joker regards him with his chin resting in his hand, and then guesses, “It’s about me, isn’t it?”

Bruce sighs, leaning back against a bookcase. “Yeah. But it’s for us to work out.”

“It bothers you that he doesn’t trust me, huh? Well, it shouldn’t. Frankly I’d be insulted if he just welcomed me with open arms.”

“Just drop it, J. Please. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fine,” Joker expels on an exasperated breath, stretching in the chair. “You know best, lambchop. So, what sort of tomfoolery are we going to indulge in as we while away time for dinner?” 

Okay. That’s his cue. He was ready to do it yesterday, before Joker distracted him so thoroughly, and now… it’s as good a time as any. 

He still hesitates for another minute or two, catching the unmoving, painted gazes of his parents, before he squares his shoulders, sets his jaw and marches right past all of his misgivings.

“Do you want to see the cave?”

Joker flinches, and freezes where he sits with his finger against the screen of the phone. 

“The cave,” he repeats. 

“Yes.”

Joker sits there without a word for a while — so long, in fact, that Bruce begins to worry. 

Then he leaps to his feet, slipping the phone into the pocket of his pants, and turns to Bruce with a grin so wide it crinkles his eyes in a way that is decidedly unnatural. “Do I ever! Lead the way, my broody heart’s desire.”

“Broody heart, or broody desire?” Bruce wonders under his breath, mostly to distract both of them. “Are you sure though? You seem a bit… We don’t have to if you’d rather leave it for another day.”

“Absolutely not. I’ve wanted to see your sanctum sanctorum for ages. I am simply worried that it will not live up to what I’ve imagined over the years. I’m already crushed that you don’t appear to sleep upside down and my little heart might not bear further disappointments.”

“It’s okay to wait,” Bruce presses. “If you’re not ready…”

Joker’s eyes narrow. “Are _you_?”

A sigh builds in Bruce’s throat, but he keeps it in. He recognizes the tactic all too well, and is willing to go along with it if turning the tables like this will make Joker more comfortable. All at once he wishes he hadn’t brought the cave up at all, but…

Oh, fuck it. He _has_ brought it up now, and they’ll just get locked in a futile circle of baiting one another if he doesn’t follow through. If Joker can’t handle it, well, they both know the safeword. Bruce has to at least show that he’s ready to take this step with him.

After this morning, after Alfred and everything else, it feels all the more important that he does.

Joker gets out of the chair and stands beside Bruce as he plays the combination on the piano keys.

“Neat trick,” he comments when the bookshelf moves to the side for them.

Bruce agrees. It is a neat trick, if he does say so himself. He gazes down the steps and into the wet, cold darkness breathing chill into his face. 

“Ready?” he asks, and when he looks over to Joker, Joker nods. He isn’t smiling anymore.

Bruce studies him for a moment. He takes a steadying breath and, projecting confidence he doesn’t have, leads the way down the steps.

Joker is silent when he follows him. The two of them inch slowly down into the blast of cool cave air. Bruce leaves the library door ajar so a strip of sunshine carpets over the steps, showing the way down, illuminating tiny particles of dust, reflecting in shimmering surfaces of damp rock. Lights burst to life in neat rows as the sensors pick up Bruce’s presence, but the computer stays silent and dark, and other than the quiet whisper of electricity the cave drips with the sound of trickling water and the deep, layered echo of their soft footsteps tap-tapping down the stairs.

Bruce tries not to glance over his shoulder. Curious as he is about Joker’s reaction he doesn’t think he could go through with it if he saw his face now, in the last — the only — place Bruce can still call his own. 

He wonders if he’ll ever feel as safe in the cave after today as he used to. Probably not. 

The end of an era. 

_You trusted him with your dick in his mouth not two hours ago_ , Bruce reminds himself as the thought chills into anxiety. It doesn’t help. This is different than admitting Joker into his home — different even than inviting him to his parents’ bed. 

And maybe Joker realizes it too. 

Bruce keeps walking until he reaches the computer, but he’s achingly aware of the fact that Joker’s footsteps behind him halted halfway down the stairs. He doesn’t turn. Not until he activates the computer and feeds the steady buzz of police scanners into the hungry, gaping silence. 

“Well?” he asks. The thrum of trusted machinery soothes some of the rawness away, enough that he’s finally ready to glance over his shoulder and take in the sight of the Clown Prince of Crime himself standing in — _invading_ , a tiny voice whispers in his ear — his sanctuary. “What do you think?”

Joker is silent, lingering at a point halfway down to the computer, one leg on the upper step, the other below. His skin, his hair, his bright, vivid colors all stands in sharp contrast with the shadows of the cave, marking him out as different, other, intruder; dwarfing him, making him small. Bruce can’t read his face from the distance but he thinks that there’s something haunted about the way Joker is slowly craning his neck to stare at the roof of the cave where the bats sleep, and then down, to the right, to the left. 

It takes him a good moment to break whatever spell he’s worked himself into and descend all the way down, and even then he doesn’t say a word, not when he comes to stand by the computer next to Bruce, and not when he gazes up at the monitors. 

_I watched you from here_ , Bruce wants to say, and doesn’t. It probably wouldn’t go over well. Not with Joker looking like…

Like this.

He almost jumps out of his skin when Joker turns — sharp, sudden — and walks over to the T-Rex statue. He touches the thing as though in greeting, gloveless hand splayed over its massive thigh, gazing up to contemplate its open maw.

When his hand drops, his fingers shake, and he opens and closes his fist repeatedly. Bruce watches the tight, strained line of his shoulders and says nothing. He waits. 

But Joker isn’t done. The next thing to catch his eye is the suit display, and he comes up to peer at each of them, touching his full hand against the glass cases. He looks distant, lost somewhere inside his own head and like he’s a breath away from some sort of outbreak; but it never comes, and he moves from glass to glass in perfect silence, his quickening breath the only thing marking his progress. He walks right past the Robin and Batgirl suits as though they aren’t even there. His eyes are locked on something beyond, and Bruce suddenly wants to come up to him because he knows, with a cold sense of inevitability, where Joker is headed: the villain display. 

He makes himself stay put and collapses into the chair, and watches with a tight, tight heart as Joker comes to stand before the case where the Red Hood helmet sits.

It’s not the original. Or maybe, it is, but Bruce had collected it off a different Red Hood, before Joker’s time. Bruce has no idea what happened to the one Joker wore that night, and wonders if Joker still has it. 

Joker takes a very long time standing there by the glass case.

And then, he turns his back on it so abruptly that Bruce worries he might get whiplash. Instead, Joker marches off to admire the other items on display dedicated to himself that Bruce has collected over the years: the replica suit, the pilfered Joker grenades, gas samples, boutonnieres, weaponized cards, whoopee cushions, newspaper clippings, knives, chattering teeth, bomb detonators, guns. Their owner greets each item fondly like a long lost friend, smiling a tight, winded smile Bruce cannot read from the distance. 

He ignores the displays dedicated to his colleagues entirely. 

When he finally makes his way back to Bruce, his hands are still shaking, and he’s rubbing one against the other in a gesture Bruce has come to recognize as a stimming tactic. His heart hurts at the sight, especially since Joker isn’t quite meeting his eye. He isn’t making any jokes either, no comments, no smug remarks… nothing. 

Shit.

“Do you want to see the car?” Bruce finds himself asking, and the look Joker shoots him is odd — tight, far too bright, but almost grateful. The corner of his mouth is twitching as though whatever it is he’s trying to hold in is putting up one hell of a fight to get out, and Bruce has a cold feeling it’s been doing that for a while.

Coming down here so soon was a mistake. 

But they’re here now, and Bruce is going to try to salvage what he can. If the car won’t distract Joker from whatever is brewing inside him, Bruce thinks with just a hint of pride, then he doesn’t know what could. 

He nods and, without touching Joker, shows him to the car pad. Once there he holds back with his hands folded over his chest as Joker trails careful, trembling, twitching fingers over the sleek black shape; the hood, the roof, the tinted windows, the boot, the rocket engines. 

It goes on for a bit. 

And then Joker finally speaks.

“You know,” he says in a voice so tense it seems to vibrate in the still, dank air, “I’ve had so many fantasies about you fucking me in that car I could probably write a racy novel trilogy for middle-aged housekeepers that would make me a bigger billionaire than you are.”

He isn’t quite smiling as he says it. His gaze stays locked on the car, and he’s stroking a twitchy pattern over the hood, just one finger, the rest curled up tight. 

“Make a list,” Bruce suggests, trying to cover up just how worried he is. “I’m curious. Just how many ways _can_ one have sex in a car?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“With you? I’m sure.” Bruce hesitates, and then risks coming closer and laying a gentle hand on Joker’s shoulder. 

“J.?” he whispers. “What… what do you need? What’s happening? Talk to me.”

Joker shakes his head so violently his hair blurs into a mass of curls. “Just…” he giggles, like he can no longer hold it in; the sound goes breathless and high-pitched and carries up to the bats. “Just… give me a moment. I’ll be back to my sunny self in a jiffy. I only…” he laughs again, and seems to choke on it.

Bruce swallows and looks away. He doesn’t pretend he understands what’s going on. He’s worried, and cold with it, and next to him Joker is still shaking and giggling hysterically like he doesn’t know how else to deal with himself.

“I’ll… be over there,” Bruce tells him slowly, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans, feeling useless. All he wants is to sweep Joker into his arms and hold him through it, but just because it helped before doesn’t mean it will help now, and… “If you need me,” he whispers. “Okay?”

Joker keeps giggling and gives no sign that he heard him; his hand presses against his mouth so hard he’s all but gnawing at his own knuckles. His eyes are closed, and he’s trying to breathe, with little success. 

Right. Okay. If Bruce gets going now he might make it back up to the library, grab Joker’s meds and bring them down here before it gets any worse. And it looks like it’s about to.

Just as he’s about to leave the pad though, Joker’s hand shoots out and closes around his wrist in a grip tight enough to impress Clark Kent himself. 

“Batsy.”

Bruce looks up his arm and into his eyes — big, impossibly big, the pupils shrunk, his cheeks wet, his wide, manic smile trembling at the corners. There’s something lost and yet terrifying in his expression, something far too raw and naked and real, and Bruce feels that he should be looking away from it, he should not be witnessing this, he should be — 

Joker tightens his hold on Bruce’s wrist into something strong enough to crush bone, and gives a sharp, desperate tug.

Okay, Bruce thinks, everything inside him going soft and weak and aching. Okay. This…

He can do this. 

He comes up to Joker slowly, like he might approach an animal with its leg trapped in a snare. His free arm lifts to wind around Joker’s waist, backing him against the car until he’s pushing Joker to sit on the hood and stepping in between his legs. He waits until Joker’s grip on his wrist goes slack and then puts the other arm around him too, and coaxes him close, and rests his chin on Joker’s sharp, trembling shoulder.

Two skinny white arms come up around him to crush him closer still, a painful grip that steals the breath out of him, and Joker tucks his face into Bruce’s shoulder, and then just — breathes. 

Bruce lets him. He rubs soothing circles into Joker’s back over the silk shirt, and whispers into his ear, “It’s all right, J. I got you now. It’s okay. Breathe with me now, come on, one, two, three…”

Joker digs fingernails deep into Bruce’s shoulders and presses his cold forehead against the pulse in Bruce’s neck. He holds on tight as though if he lets go he’ll fall, and Bruce holds him back, doing his best to show him that he won’t let that happen. 

Time passes, measured out by echoes of waterdrops trickling against rock, the gentle buzz of police scanners, the flutter of bat wings over their heads. At one point Bruce thinks he might have heard Alfred’s footsteps come down and halt sharply on the stairs. He doesn’t dare move and look around to check. He concentrates on the sound of Joker breathing to the tune of his own heartbeat, and keeps counting under his breath, and waits until the steps retreat back up, leaving them alone in gentle, drifting darkness.

He holds on until Joker’s hold on him no longer feels like a vice; until the body in his arms releases the last of its tension and collapses, Bruce’s strength the only thing keeping it up.

He kisses Joker’s ear, and then his temple. He lets his mouth linger against chilled skin, warms it with his own breath. “Wanna go back up?” he asks.

Joker exhales hotly, wetly against him. He holds on for just a heartbeat longer. 

And then pushes Bruce away.

“How rude of me,” he accuses, laughs, just a touch too loud; tries for a smile and ends up several inches short. He still looks wobbly, unsteady, far too shaken, but he’s sliding off the car now and standing on his own two feet, patting himself down and looking anywhere but at Bruce. “Do excuse me, darling. I suppose the sight of all your… wonderful toys… simply overwhelmed me. You do have such an awful lot of them. What’s this one do?” 

His fingers are beginning to twitch again as he points to a random button, and he lets out another giggle.

“It opens the gate for the car,” Bruce explains. “J., don’t apologize. Not for that. Do you wanna talk —”

“And this one?”

“Operates the lift. But —”

“What about this one?”

“Adjusts temperature. Are you —”

“And this one here?” 

“It’s the alarm, but — no, don’t touch that!”

It’s too late. Joker slams his entire fist on the big red button and all at once the cave rings with the shriek of a siren, all systems going into emergency mode, exits shutting down, the bats stirring into panicked chirping as they’re agitated into flight.

Bruce swats Joker’s hand away from the button and overrides the alarm using his phone, and the silence that drops on them the moment he does hurts his ears almost as much as the blare of the alarm did.

He resists the urge to grab Joker by the shoulders and shake him, and instead, forces himself to calm down.

He insists, “Joker. You don’t have to do that. It’s all right.” 

“No it’s not!” Joker shouts, and the sudden, furious sound startles the bats above them into even louder panic. 

Echoes of it disturb the air, and they stand there in the aftermath suspended in some sort of stalemate until Joker breaks it by laughing derisively at — well.

Bruce supposes Joker is laughing at himself, and at both of them all at once.

He squares his shoulders and decides, right, that just settles it. Clearly it’s far too early in the game for attempts to normalize things between them like — like caves, he supposes. Like inner sanctums, and breaking boundaries. He still doesn’t understand what caused Joker’s outbreak but it’s obvious to him that he’s brought it on by misjudging just how far they can go on their second day, and it’s clearer to him now than ever that they need to get away from here. 

As soon as they can.

“What is it,” he tries again, hoping against hope. “Joker. You can tell me.”

Once again, Joker is shaking his head. He brings both hands to dig into his scalp, into the back of his neck, counting under his breath.

When he looks up at Bruce again, his eyes are so cold with hatred Bruce takes a step back.

“I’m going up to my room,” Joker tells Bruce in a voice so quiet Bruce can hardly hear it over the chirping of the bats above. “You will not follow me there. I need to be alone.”

He doesn’t wait for Bruce to agree; he simply stalks past him and all but runs up the stairs, taking three at a time. 

He doesn’t glance over his shoulder once.

 

***

 

“Master Bruce?” Alfred asks some time later, announcing himself before he even starts descending to the cave.

Bruce sighs, slumping at the computer. “I’m here, Alfred.”

He doesn’t turn as Alfred’s footsteps draw near, and doesn’t look when Alfred puts a plate of something warm and delicious-smelling at his elbow. “Your dinner, sir.”

Bruce hums, staring up at the computer.

“Master Bruce —”

“Is the gun still here?”

Alfred sighs. “Yes, it is.”

“Then we’ve got nothing to talk about.”

“Master Bruce, I beg to differ. I will not stand in your way if you’re determined to go through with this holiday plan, even though I dearly wish you wouldn’t and I won’t be able to sleep a wink until you’re back safe and in one piece. In exchange, you will let me have this.”

Bruce buries his face in his hands, pressing in hard. 

“Why does it have to be a gun,” he whispers. “I could ask Lucius to design you something. A stunner. A taser. Anything. We’ve got a whole arsenal of non-lethal weapons.”

“I have my reasons,” Alfred replies, unrelenting. “But if it makes you feel any better, I will promise this: I will not shoot to kill unless it is absolutely necessary.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better at all.”

“Be that as it may, sir, that remains my one condition. Still, I suppose a taser from Lucius might put both of us more at ease, as a… first resort.”

Bruce breathes out, and finally manages to meet Alfred’s eye.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he decides after a moment, turning back to the screens. “I’ve got work to do.”

Alfred glances at the monitors and raises an eyebrow. “Novelty store robberies?”

“Several over the space of two weeks,” Bruce confirms. 

“A new Joker gang?”

“Could be.” Or it could be Dr. Quinzel, back in town. It’s still too early to tell and Bruce only has hearsay to go on, but there’s definitely a pattern emerging from the robberies, and combined with the rumors of a new player on the Gotham chessboard who’s supposedly gathering up Joker’s ex-henchmen… 

Well. There’s still three novelty stores left untouched. It’s time Batman paid them a visit.

“I shall leave you to it then, sir,” Alfred says, and Bruce gives him a stiff nod.

There’s a moment of silence. 

“How is he?” Alfred asks, quietly.

Bruce turns in the chair to face him. “Right now? I don’t know. It was bad. Has he left his room?”

“No,” Alfred confesses. “I left the plate at his door. What happened?”

Something unkind flares up in Bruce, and he demands, “Why do you want to know?”

“I worry.”

“For him or for me?”

“At the moment, for the both of you,” Alfred confesses, not looking away. “Like it or not, it seems to be a package deal.”

Bruce holds his eyes for a second, two, three. Then he breathes out and turns away, sighing. “He had a panic attack. It was probably my fault. It was stupid bringing him down here so soon.”

“Maybe,” Alfred whispers. “Or maybe the reaction would have been the same no matter when you did it. Do you know what it was that upset him?”

“Everything?” Bruce shrugs. “I have no idea. He wouldn’t talk about it.”

“Good grief, there’s two of them now,” Alfred mutters. “Heaven help us.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I quite agree. Clearly there’s even more work to be done here than I thought.”

Bruce gets out of the chair and heads for the suits, telling Alfred, “Stay away from his room. Better yet, get out of the Manor for the night — I don’t want to leave you alone with him when he’s like this. The penthouse is free.”

Alfred sighs, but allows, “Very well. For tonight, then. I’ll be back in the morning, and don’t even think about not reporting to me, young man.”

Bruce selects one of the older suits, compensating for the cape Joker stole. 

“I’m still not okay with the gun, Alfred,” he warns. “We _will_ get back to it later.”

“I would expect nothing less, Master Bruce. Happy hunting.”

Bruce says nothing, and waits until Alfred is out of the cave before he starts to change. 

He almost hopes it’s another Joker gang and not Quinzel, and he hopes they’ll be dumb enough to try and take him on. 

He dearly needs to punch something.

 

***

 

Joker still doesn’t emerge when Bruce drags himself up the stairs one fruitless, uneventful patrol later, and doesn’t answer when Bruce knocks on his door.

It doesn’t lock. Bruce made sure of that before he brought Joker home. His hand hovers over the knob…

He lets it drop. He drags himself over to the master bedroom and collapses there, staring at the spot Joker slept in last night. He knows for a fact he’s not going to get any sleep tonight.

 

***

 

It’s past dawn when Joker finally comes out of his room, and when he does, he all but throws himself at Bruce, clawing at his tank top so hard he rips it in half.

“Fuck me,” he whispers into Bruce’s mouth, kissing him with fury that feels like he’s trying to bite right through Bruce’s skin to the muscle tissue underneath. “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me right now, come on baby, I need it.”

His fingernails are scratching bloody trails over Bruce’s chest. His teeth are leaving angry marks on Bruce’s neck, and for a minute, Bruce wonders if he will actually bite through an artery. He tries to hold him back, slow him down, he tries to whisper, “Shhh, it’s okay,” and “you’re not well” but Joker only clings to him harder, refusing to be talked down, and keeps repeating _fuck me fuck me fuck me_ like he needs it just to stay alive.

Bruce knows he shouldn’t. It feels all kinds of wrong, and not in the wrong-right way it felt the night before; and even though his body reacts instantly he doesn’t let it overpower him this time. Instead he holds Joker close and lets him bite and scratch and mark him as much as he wants, and only dares to touch Joker’s cock through the soft cotton of his pajama pants when Joker’s hands close around his throat.

He closes his eyes, moves closer, breathes into Joker’s neck. He kisses and kisses and kisses it as he strokes, refusing to let the awkward, alien angle, the novelty of doing something like this for another man for the first time, distract him. Joker is too far gone to care about his technique anyway and he clings to Bruce, sobbing into his shoulder all the way through it, and when he comes, it’s with a sigh that’s the quietest sound he made since he barged into the bedroom.

He not so much relaxes then as goes completely slack, collapsing into Bruce, and that’s fine. That’s okay. Bruce gathers him up without a word and rocks the both of them gently on the bed without a word as the marks Joker left on his body cool in the early morning air.

Then, when his muscles go numb and his back begins to protest, he rearranges them so that they lie down on the bed together, and he brings the blankets up to cover both of them. He knows Joker is not asleep. He’s seen dawn reflecting off his dull, unfocused eyes. 

He kisses the top of his head, and strokes him, and holds him close, keeping them both warm.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, right? 
> 
> I'm gonna say right away that I don't know when I'll be able to post the next chapter - it's possible that the wait will be just as long and I'm really sorry about that. I'm still having a hard time finding the time and energy to focus on writing with my full-time job draining most of my mental resources; hopefully it will get better though.
> 
> That said, I really want to say a huge warm thank you to everyone who left kudos and comments on this story so far - I know I haven't replied to a lot of you but that's because my anxiety about not updating got so bad that I couldn't even look in my inbox. I have done that now, and I'm overwhelmed by all the goodwill and encouragement from all of you, and I'm so incredibly grateful. 
> 
> Extra thanks to Robatics, Ashes and my new brain twin Ufonaut for their endless cheering and support, even after my whining probably got annoying. And more thanks to Joe-Kerrs for their [comic adaptation of HWA](https://halfwayacrosscomic.tumblr.com/), which keeps blowing my mind.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include references to past self-harm (skip the bathroom scene if you want to avoid it), a scene that _might_ be read as a suicide attempt and an anxiety attack near the end of the chapter (because we haven't had enough of those, right?) For the most part though, it's fluff of the teeth-rotting variety because I needed it, dammit. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

When Alfred opens the door to the bedroom the next morning, he finds them still like this — tangled in each other, silent but awake, frayed edges of exhausted tension trembling on every quiet breath. 

“Ah.” Alfred pauses in the door. Bruce looks at him, his hand still in Joker’s hair. 

Joker doesn’t move.

“I brought breakfast,” Alfred announces eventually, opening the door fully to show the breakfast tray. “Shall I just leave it here?”

“Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce whispers, and in his arms, Joker finally turns his head to face Alfred too. It’s the first voluntary movement he’s made since he collapsed against Bruce like a rag doll. 

“Yes, Mr. Pennyworth, thank you,” he says. His voice rings clear and sure. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to borrow you later to talk over some of the travel offers we saw yesterday.”

“I… all right.” Alfred backs slowly for the door. “If you need me, I will be working in the garden.”

“Your garden is beautiful, Mr Pennyworth.” 

Alfred nods, finally finding it in him to retreat behind his usual blank expression. “Thank you.”

With that, he leaves them, closing the door with the most delicate of clicks. 

The silence in his wake closes in on Bruce again, like additional gravity. He lets his hand move through Joker’s hair, each twitch of muscle heavy with uncertainty.

He isn’t at all sure he’s allowed the gesture, anymore.

“You still want to go?”

“Hm?”

“The holiday.” Bruce swallows. “You haven’t changed your mind?”

“Don’t be silly.” Joker starts moving, shrugging the blanket off his bare shoulders, pushing himself up on Bruce’s chest. “Of course we’re going.”

Bruce makes a half-hearted attempt to keep him in bed but Joker slips out of his grasp. He sits up on the edge of the bed with his back to Bruce. Cool air instantly presses against Bruce’s lower body in his wake. 

“I just thought…” Bruce closes his eyes, breathes in, breathes out. “I wasn’t sure if you’d still want to go after yesterday.” 

Joker still isn’t looking at him. “And why wouldn’t I?” 

“J.” Bruce reaches out to touch his bare back and finds it cold. “What happened in the cave. I’m sorry. We should —”

Joker stands up, fast and jerky, and makes his way around the bed to the door. 

Bruce pushes himself up on his elbows. “Joker. Come on. We should talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about, darling.”

“Yes, there is,” Bruce insists. “I want to understand what happened. I want to know what I did wrong. You have to talk to me, J. Otherwise —”

“With respect, Batsy, the only one I _have_ to talk to about my little… idiosyncrasies… is the good doctor.” Joker’s voice is cold and sharp, and his hand is on the door handle. “What _you_ might or might not have done wrong is neither here nor there. We won’t talk about this again. Right now all I need and want from you is to respect that.”

“So I’m just supposed to pretend that the cave never happened? Or this morning?”

“Now he’s got it.” Joker tilts his head towards Bruce just enough that Bruce glimpses the bitter curve of his smirk. “It’ll be better this way for all involved, believe me. Now, I will go to my lovely new room and freshen up, and then I will solicit Mr. Pennyworth’s help choosing the best little loveshack for our Scottish honeymoon. You’re welcome to join us whenever you’re ready to play along. Oh, and darling…” 

He pauses, and reaches into the pocket of his pajama pants. He turns to Bruce and holds out his right hand, palm open. 

The shock bracelet catches the dull late morning light, casting it into Bruce’s eyes. 

Joker’s eyes are cold when he says, “I’d like you to put this on me now.”

Bruce meets his steady gaze, sitting up on the edge of the bed. “Why? You’re not required to wear it in the house.”

Joker’s lips quirk up in the corners. It doesn’t make the smile any less cold. 

“No,” he agrees, “but I believe it will put Mr. Pennyworth a bit more at ease, don’t you think? You might consider making a duplicate of the remote and give it to him as well. I’d hate to drive even more of a wedge between you two than my mere presence already does.”

Bruce thinks of Alfred’s gun. “You don’t have to do this,” he whispers. 

“I know. That’s the beauty of choice, you see. Besides, after all this time wearing it I do feel rather naked without it.” Joker’s eyes narrow. “Well?”

It takes forever for Bruce to move. He hates the familiar weight of the bracelet in his hands; hates how warm it feels from resting in the pocket of Joker’s pants all this time. 

And he hates the secret, bone-deep relief when the metal clicks shut around Joker’s wrist again.

The bracelet gives a soft hum as it activates, blinking green before it locks home. Joker shakes his wrist, gazing at it with dull eyes. His smile never falters. 

“Excellent.” He raises his eyes to Bruce. “Bath time now, I think.”

“J.” Bruce reaches out, and misses Joker’s hand by an inch. 

Joker pauses with his hand on the door handle. 

“We are not talking about any of it,” he reminds Bruce, “but I will say this: it’s hard enough doing this without you reminding me what I’ve lost and what you still get to keep.”

This time, when he shoots a look over his shoulder, he’s not smiling anymore. “See you downstairs,” he says, and leaves.

Bruce lets him. Slowly, his legs carry him back to collapse on the edge of the bed again. 

He looks at the breakfast tray Alfred left for them both, and suddenly has to fight down the impulse to push it to the floor. 

 

***

 

When he finally makes it downstairs, washed and dressed but no less anxious for it, he finds both Alfred and Joker in the garden in a scene so improbable that it stops him short. Both men have aprons and rubber gloves on, and Joker is wearing a pair of Bruce’s sunglasses as he kneels in one of Alfred’s flower beds, his hands buried deep in dirt. Alfred, lounging close by on a garden chair and sipping tea under an expansive shade umbrella, seems to be teaching him how to dig in the soil to make room for fresh seeds. 

For a moment, watching them, Bruce wonders if he ever woke up at all.

Then Alfred catches him staring from the corner of his eye, and turns to smile at him. 

“Master Bruce,” he greets pleasantly. “Care for some tea?”

Joker stiffens at the words, but doesn’t look up, and a heartbeat later goes back to his digging.

“Thank you.” Bruce looks around, scanning the horizon for possible paparazzi hazard. He looks back to Joker. 

“I didn’t know you liked gardening,” he manages.

“Neither did I.” Joker shrugs, looking up at Bruce with a smile that isn’t any warmer than the ones from the bedroom. “But Dr. Mulligan says it’s calming, and that I need calming hobbies.”

Bruce turns a questioning look to Alfred, who shrugs as well in a gesture so similar to Joker’s it amps up the uncanny valley impression up to a hundred. He pours tea into one of the three cups and slides it towards Bruce. “I do rather enjoy having someone to do my dirty work,” he confesses, not bothering to keep quiet. “And the view is gratifying.” 

It makes Joker chuckle, and this, at least, sounds genuine. Alfred surrenders a tight smile that’s gone the very next second. He still seems far more relaxed than he did even this morning, and though some of it is definitely an act Bruce finds himself unwinding by degrees. He has no delusions — it’s definitely the work of the bracelet now glinting at Joker’s wrist. But it’s a start, and maybe if he does get Alfred his own remote Alfred will reconsider the gun. 

He sits down in the chair across from Alfred and watches Joker dig. 

“He made me tea,” Alfred whispers after a moment. 

Bruce’s eyebrows go up. He stares at Alfred and mouths, “Really?”

“Indeed.” Alfred pulls a face. “It was from a teabag, and horrendous. Even so.” He glances at Joker, looking thoughtful. “The sentiment was… not unappreciated.”

Bruce has no idea what to say to that. Joker trying to make Alfred tea is one thing, but the fact that Alfred apparently _tasted_ it...

“Oh, I’m only trying to weasel into your good graces, Mr. Pennyworth,” Joker offers from his perch in the flower bed. 

“So I gathered. No teabags next time, please, Master John, should the urge strike you again. We might have to see about teaching you to brew tea properly. And that’s quite deep enough. You can proceed with the seeds, like I showed you.”

“What are you planting?” Bruce asks, watching Joker, still reeling just a little bit from Alfred’s news. 

Joker sits up, pushing hair out of his eyes and streaking dirt over his face from the soiled gloves. His smile widens as he looks at Bruce over the sunglasses. 

“Forget-me-nots.”

 

*** 

 

The rest of the day passes relatively peacefully, with Alfred and Joker working in the garden and over holiday offers and Bruce securing all the permissions they need to go ahead. For all the pretense of ceasefire on all sides the tension underpinning everything since the morning never quite dissipates, and it sets the tone for the next few days. 

For one thing, the week drags on in a flurry of phone calls, paperwork and negotiations, and reassurances that yes, Bruce does want to go through with taking the Joker away on a holiday, and no, he has not lost his mind. No one is thrilled by the idea but he is still surprised at how little resistance he meets, considering; he supposes that, at the end of the day, as Jim put it, it’s Bruce’s funeral. The small measure of comfort the parties involved seem to take is in the fact that whatever Joker does on non-Gotham soil is out of their hands, and thus, someone else’s problem. Bruce catches himself wondering if they _hope_ that Joker will snap and do something horrible outside of their jurisdiction, just so they don’t have to worry about him anymore, and then concludes that yeah, probably. 

Only Dr. Mulligan seems genuinely concerned about both of them, but whatever her conversation about this with Joker was, it was effective,and she drops by the Manor on Friday afternoon to deliver signed papers greenlighting the trip. 

Joker simply nods when Bruce tells him about it, never pausing the game he’s been playing on his phone. He doesn’t smile, which is probably just as well. All through the week Bruce has never once seen any emotion on his face that would break through the dull sheen in his eyes that settled there the morning after the cave and never left. He’s composed and polite enough when he offers to help Alfred out with chores; when they take tense, stilted meals together — Joker’s plate always ending up half-full by the time he compliments Alfred’s cooking and declares he’s done — or when he and Bruce sit together in the library, each occupied in his own way. But the distance from that morning only grows, thickening with every passing silence that Bruce is helpless to break...

Except in bed. That is the only time when Joker’s polite but cool persona shatters to let Bruce glimpse his old fire underneath; but even then, they are just glimpses. Joker only comes to Bruce twice, and leaves each time almost as soon as they’re done, his side of the bed going cold. 

“And I’m grateful for it,” Bruce tells Leslie on Sunday in her office, gazing into his glass of water. “How bad is it that I’m grateful for it?” 

He feels Leslie watching him — judging him. He doesn’t look up.

“You still don’t trust him,” she says softly. 

“No.”

“That’s understandable.” 

“Is it?” Bruce lets out a bitter laugh. “Maybe. But you can’t tell me it’s healthy that I’m glad the man I — the man I want doesn’t spend the night with me.” 

“Would you be able to fall asleep with him next to you?” Leslie asks gently. “If he wasn’t under the influence of the sleeping pills?” 

Bruce doesn’t need time to answer that one. He’s spent enough long hours lying awake in his empty bed asking himself the very same question. 

“No.” 

“Do you think he knows that?”

“Yes.”

“Right.” Leslie takes a moment, and then says, “Nothing about your current situation is normal, Bruce. You can’t measure it by everyone else’s scale. It’s only natural that you still have problems trusting him; you two are only just beginning. It takes time to get over the kind of history you share. The fact that he understands it, and that he obviously respects your discomfort and gives you space so you can get the sleep you need, is a good sign. You already trust him enough to let him out of your sight in your own home.”

Bruce swallows. “Barely.”

“More will come in time.” 

Bruce drinks his water, and whispers, “I’m not sure that he does it _just_ to let me sleep. I think he needs his space, too.”

“And does that bother you?”

“No.” Bruce thinks about it some more. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Well then.” He can hear the smile in Leslie’s voice. “You two will have a great deal to talk about during the trip.”

“Do you think it’s a good idea?” Bruce asks, finally looking at her. 

“Honestly? Yes.” Leslie sits back in her chair, eyeing him warmly. “I think getting away from Gotham for a while, a change of scenery, will do you both good as long as you make an active effort to establish clear, mutual rules, and as long as you’re open with one another. Talk to him, Bruce. Learn his boundaries and let him know yours. Use this time to try and see him with new eyes, and try to understand where he’s coming from. It could be just the thing you both need to get a clean start.”

“As long as we don’t kill each other,” Bruce mutters.

“If you do, you don’t have to pay for your next session,” Leslie allows magnanimously, and Bruce smiles. “Do you think that’s a real possibility, even now? The Joker never wanted to kill you. You said so yourself in the past, many times. It was never about that.”

“No, I guess not. He still gave it his all, but… you’re right.” Bruce sits back, glancing to the window. “But that was then. Back when we were still playing the game, still…” _Dancing_. “Engaging by the old rules. Now? I took everything from him, Leslie. I didn’t think of it that way, but after the cave…” 

“It was his choice,” Leslie reminds him gently.

“Yeah. Yeah, it was.” Bruce drinks the rest of the water in one go. 

He thinks about that cold, cold look Joker gave him down in the cave right before he fled. 

He whispers, “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t hate me for giving him that choice in the first place.”

Leslie is silent for a moment, and then asks, “Do you sometimes wish you hadn’t? Or that he hadn’t said yes?”

 _No_ , Bruce wants to say. _No, of course not. The thought never crossed my mind. I don’t regret any of it, and I certainly don’t sometimes think about how easier it might have been if none of it had ever happened._

He doesn’t. Leslie can always tell when he’s lying. 

 

***

 

On Monday night, before he gets on the plane, Bruce hands Alfred a small cardboard box. 

“I want the gun gone when we get back,” he says over the gusting wind as Alfred opens the box and finds the remote to Joker’s shock bracelet inside. “Please.”

Alfred looks up into Bruce’s eyes, and then off to the side where Joker is already waiting halfway up the ramp stairs to the jet.

“We’ll talk more when you return,” Alfred says cautiously, tucking the remote into the inner pocket of his coat.

Bruce nods. He hadn’t really counted on anything else. 

He moves to leave, but Alfred’s hand on his wrist stops him mid-step.

“We need to go,” Bruce says over a tight throat. “The plane —”

“Has your name on it. It will wait,” Alfred says, and then he tugs Bruce close. 

All at once Bruce finds himself in a tight, stiff hug. It doesn’t last longer than a heartbeat, and Alfred is stepping away before Bruce can start worrying if he has it in him to return it; but one elegant hand still lingers on Bruce’s shoulder.

“I need you to call me every few hours, understood?” he says fiercely. “I have Superman on speed-dial and I know where you’re staying. I will not hesitate to deploy the heavy guns if I don’t hear from you. It has to be a call, too. No texting.”

Bruce looks into his eyes, and it’s all he can do to nod, swallowing, feeling the sudden sting in his eye.

“I’ll be fine,” he tries. 

“The day you’re truly fine is the day I will happily retire to the Bahamas.” Alfred’s grip on Bruce’s shoulder tightens, a quick clench, and then his hand drops away. He nods at Bruce, face painted in lines of tension, weariness and worry. 

“Whatever you’re planning to achieve with this, I hope it works,” he says, stepping away, tucking himself in against the wind. “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” Bruce says, sincerely, and gives him another nod.

Then he’s off to join Joker on the ramp.

“He loves you very much,” Joker comments quietly, watching as Alfred walks backwards towards the car parked a little way off, his eyes still fixed on the both of them. 

“Yeah.” Bruce turns over his shoulder for one last look as well, and then puts his hand on the small of Joker’s back. “Let’s go.”

 

***

 

It’s midnight on the dot when the jet lifts off. As the cabin goes dark and the plane climbs into the air, Gotham starts growing smaller and smaller beneath them until it becomes a splatter of light cut off from the rest of the world by the dark ribbon of the river. From up high, the bridges with their traffic — still busy at this hour — look like the rays of a sun on a child’s drawing, little straight lines shooting off from the defiantly bright center.

Bruce thinks there’s irony in that, and he wants to comment on it to Joker. He doesn’t.

Instead he watches Joker watch the city through the window as the jet levels out, then begins to circle, banking to the right to bring even more of the city’s aggressive glitter into view. The window pane reflects the images of both their faces superimposed over the lights, and Joker’s is still, far too still to read.

Bruce hesitates for just a breath or two. Then he takes Joker’s hand, feeling the cool metal of the bracelet dig into his skin.

“Hey,” he whispers. “You all right?”

Joker doesn’t answer, or tear his eyes away from the window.

Just as Bruce is about to sigh in defeat and let go though, Joker does turn his palm up and lets their fingers knit together, squeezing tight. Bruce gazes at their joined hands, then sits back in the expansive chair, settling in to catch glimpses of the last of Gotham’s glow through the strands of Joker’s hair.

A few minutes later the city disappears, swallowed up by darkness and distance. Only then does Joker turn his head from the window.

He smiles at Bruce. It’s one of those distant smiles that don’t quite reach his eyes.

“So, lover,” Joker says. “How do you propose we while away the long, long hours?”

The lights in the cabin come back on, and they both blink furiously, trying to adjust. Joker giggles, pointing at Bruce and murmuring something about “bat-vision,” and as he does, something tight in him relaxes just an inch for the first time since the cave.

Bruce smiles and reaches into his breast pocket to retrieve a deck of cards.

“How about a game?”

Joker’s smile widens and this time, there is definitely a spark there that hasn’t been there in a long time. Bruce relaxes into his seat.

Yeah. Getting away was definitely a good idea.

***

Three hours into the flight, with Joker — wrapped up tight in Reggie the blanket and doped up on his sleeping pills to, as he claimed, make the journey go faster — slumped against his shoulder, he’s surer of it than ever.

“Anything I can get you, Bruce?” the flight attendant asks. She keeps sneaking fearful glances at Joker, as did her friend who is currently sequestered in the flight deck and no doubt gossiping her little heart out about how touchy-feely Bruce Wayne is being with Gotham’s most legendary bogeyman.

“No, Cheryl, it’s fine,” Bruce stage-whispers, grinning up at her. “We’ll let you know if we need anything. Why don’t you and Agnes take a break and have some of that cheesecake? It’s fantastic.”

Cheryl chuckles nervously and makes her excuses, then all but dashes for the flight deck like she can’t wait to put the barrier of a door between herself and her passengers.

Bruce glances at Joker, and idly strokes a lock of green hair away from his face.

“There’s gonna be more where that came from,” he whispers. _So much more_.

Thinking about Cheryl and Agnes, the two pilots and the border patrol at the airport, about all of their reactions and what they purport for Joker’s eventual reception in Gotham, stirs so much unease in him that his on-flight lasagna threatens to make a reappearance. It’s not a productive kind of unease — he can’t very well do anything about it from this plane. He isn’t sure that anything _could_ be done to smooth the way for when the true news eventually breaks. So he sighs, settles back into the spacious couch with the back of it leaned halfway down, and puts his arm more firmly around Joker, rearranging them into a more comfortable position.

Then, since for the moment they are alone in the cabin, he kisses Joker’s forehead, just because he can.

It helps. A little.

He does it again, and lets the act center him on the here and now so that when he goes back to reading one of the illustrated guide books about Scotland Alfred ordered for him he can actually concentrate on the words.

Midway through that, Joker sighs in his medicated sleep and snuggles closer to Bruce.

Bruce gently pulls the blanket back around him, buries his nose in Joker’s hair, and closes his eyes.

***

The field of Glasgow Airport is dark and, as far as airports go, comparatively quiet when the jet touches down on its rain-slick tarmac. It’s another few before the commercial flights roster kicks off for the day, so when Bruce and Joker descend down the ramp stairs there is only the bleary-eyed ground staff to meet them, led by the airfield manager who stands tall and straight in the rain, looking far more brisk than he has any right to be in the middle of the night.

“Right this way, sirs,” he says dutifully opening an umbrella over Bruce and Joker’s heads.

Joker keeps himself close to Bruce as they are led across the tarmac, his head bowed, the collar of his new black coat turned up, the matching trilby hat shielding his distinctive hair from rain and attention alike. He’s blinking, casting around with heavy, tired eyes that match those of the ground crew. Bruce puts a steadying arm around his waist as they walk and ignores the curious looks and whispers from the staff, and meanwhile, the airport manager patiently explains the terms and conditions for keeping Bruce’s private jet on airfield premises for the next two weeks; if _he’s_ curious about Bruce’s tall, silent companion, he has enough professionalism not to let it show.

“Your car,” he announces finally, handing Bruce the keys to a handsome black Porsche waiting discreetly just to the side of the main airport entrance, away from the glassed walls through which early travelers waiting for the security checkpoints to open could catch a glimpse of them.

They make short work of the formalities, and Bruce signs everything that needs to be signed while the border patrol officer checks their papers. He yawns just for show as he’s at it; they’d been in the air for over 6 hours and though he’s not tired, exactly, it might do to pretend that he is.

The officer does take a good long while studying Joker’s new passport and accompanying paperwork, but it’s legitimate — Bruce made sure of it. The officer seems almost disappointed as he realizes this, and then circles right to angry when Joker raises his hand, rolls down the sleeve of his coat and gestures with much drama to the shock bracelet, his smile gone just a touch too sharp to be entirely benign.

“Should you need anything, do not hesitate to call,” the manager drones on, ignoring the sudden spike of tension and offering Bruce his card. Behind them, the ground staff are hoisting the luggage from the jet into the Porsche’s sizeable trunk. Bruce nods and smiles through it, tightening his hold on Joker’s hip, and as soon as the manager bows out he opens the car’s passenger door and ushers Joker inside. 

A few minutes later they are weaving out of the airport and onto the open road. Rain patters against the car, blurring the reflections of streetlamps on the window panes and giving Bruce a keen sense of deja vu; and soon even that light is gone as they leave the airport further behind and enter the wide stretches of countryside. Bruce isn’t used to driving on the right but he makes do, and knows he’ll get used to it in a couple hours at most.

He glances at Joker. “You know, there’s still a few hours of driving before we get to the first house,” he says. “Don’t you wanna get more sleep? We had to wake you up before the pills really wore off and it’s okay if you’re still…”

Joker, gloves shed, is touching the upholstery with an air of distraction.

“J.?” Bruce prompts after another moment.

Joker glances to him, blinks slowly, and then settles back in his seat and reaches for his phone. He bustles with the cables a bit to plug it to the radio. His eyes still look red-rimmed and bloodshot, even more so in the white glare from the phone as he scrolls down in search of — something.

“Are you giving me the silent treatment?” Bruce dares after a moment, only half-joking. “What did I do?”

“Shhhhh.” Joker’s mouth curves into a wide smile when he seems to have found what he was looking for, and he taps at the phone once with an air of triumph.

“Is this the real life, is this just fantasy,” wonders the chorus from the radio, and so does Joker, so loud it almost startles Bruce into a gasp. “Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality…”

Bruce smiles, turning back to the road.

He hums along to the lines about opening one’s eyes and looking up to the skies, and his heart swells at the grin Joker shoots him.

“I’m just a poor boy! I need no sympathy!” Joker cries, delighted, pumping a fist up to meet the roof of the car. “Because I’m easy come, easy go, little high, little low…”

Bruce keeps humming along with him, settling into it and tapping against the steering wheel, and Joker amps up the volume to just near the threshold of pain, singing, bouncing in the seat, dramatically sketching out the lyrics with his dancing hands and bobbing head and wriggling body as if to burn through the last of the pills with the sheer power of movement. He keeps blinking a bit too often, and he gets the lyrics wrong more than half of the time, and has to cut off more than once as a word stutters into a yawn.

But it’s fine. It’s all fine. _They’re_ fine. They’ve left Gotham with all its weighty baggage far behind, there’s an open road ahead of them that sheds even more of that baggage off their shoulders with every new mile they cross, and at their destination — a perspective of two weeks alone without any of their old ghosts dogging their every step. Already Bruce feels lighter, fresher, with new energy thrumming through his body along with the music.

He releases it by singing along with Joker to the best of his modest ability, and doesn’t say anything when Joker hits replay as soon as the song ends.

It’s going to be fine.

***

Dawn is breaking by the time they make it to their first stop. As he gets out of the car Bruce takes a moment to admire the way the young morning sun strikes off the peaceful surface of the loch that stretches wide and proud at the bottom of the valley just below them, swallowing up the gently sloping hills with their spattering of households and fields lined with short stone fences that weave snake-like around the horizon from the distance.

The cabin they rented sits atop one such slope, deserted on all sides, facing the loch, its rear protected by a field vast enough that the noise of the road beyond dies with the distance. The nearest human dwellings in sight are still far enough that they are little more than dots of color on the surrounding lake banks, framed elegantly by the mountains looming in the mists some way away. It’s quieter here than even the Manor in the mornings, and though there aren’t any woods here to shelter them from humanity, it still feels like stepping into a wilderness so complete the noise of Gotham might as well belong to a different world.

A world Bruce misses instantly and fiercely, especially as the prospect of similar silence for the next two weeks hits him full force.

But, well. He leans back against the Porsche and puts his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and gazes down at the lake below.

They’ll survive, and maybe a couple weeks of this sort silence — organic and lively with gentle sounds and smells of unpolluted nature, so unlike the enforced, manufactured total silence of Joker’s rooms back home — is just what they both need.

He hopes.

“Where are the sheep?” Joker asks, coming to stand next to Bruce. He stretches luxuriously and his joints crack loudly in the silence. 

Bruce glances to him. “What sheep?”

“You know, sheep. Little white balls of wool that go baaah. Where are they?”

“Why would there be sheep?”

“It’s Scotland. There’s got to be sheep.”

“I don’t think there are any sheep,” Bruce ventures, scanning the horizon which fails to produce a single little white ball, woolly or otherwise. He shrugs. “Sorry?”

“It doesn’t make sense if there aren’t sheep,” Joker complains, assuming a cartoonishly dour expression.

“Maybe there’ll be sheep at the next place,” Bruce consoles, and nudges Joker with his shoulder. “Well? What do you think?”

It’s Joker’s turn to shrug. He remains unimpressed as he judges, “It’s not the city.”

“Well.” Bruce looks out over the green and blue landscape. “No.”

In the end, that’s all that needs to be said. He tries anyway. “Wanna examine the house? The keys should be under the —”

Joker is already taking off, performing a highly unnecessary roll over the Porsche’s hood to launch himself across the gravel driveway and up the steps to the porch. “Last one in the bedroom is a Gotham City elected official!”

“You son of a —” Bruce laughs, and then takes off after him, mimicking Joker’s dramatic shortcut over the car.

He catches up to Joker halfway up the stairs to the top floor and, after a brief but fierce struggle, emerges victorious, slinging the outraged Crown Prince of Crime over his shoulder. He carries him like this the rest of the way, ignoring Joker’s spirited and overly dramatic demands to “Unhand me, you brute!” and the fists ineffectually pounding at his back.

By the time Bruce throws him down on the springy squeaking bed, Joker is laughing, and keeps laughing as Bruce kisses him again and again and again.

***

Bruce wasn’t even aware that he’d fallen asleep until he stirs out of a brief but intense dream — not a nightmare, he thinks, just something uncomfortable that instantly slips through his fingers the moment he opens his eyes.

He blinks up at the unfamiliar white ceiling. Sunlight floods in through open plain white curtains to pool heat on his naked chest, and he sits up, noting with a sudden spike of dread that he’s in the bed alone.

“J.?” he calls out.

“Bathroom!” The answer, slightly muffled, reaches him from the left, and when Bruce follows the sound of Joker’s voice he sees a closed door painted a cheerful blue that’s several shades lighter than the paint on the bedroom walls.

He breathes out, collapsing against the soft pillows. The unfamiliar bed bounces his weight with a squeak.

His heart is still pounding away the residue of panic, and doesn’t let up when Bruce gradually takes in the fact that, apparently, he fell asleep next to Joker while Joker wasn’t under the influence of sleeping pills.

Oh God. Oh shit. Okay. 

He stares at the door to the ensuite he never got the chance to explore, counts backwards from five hundred, and forces himself to _think, dammit. Think_.

All right, so. The fact is. 

The fact is that he fell asleep next to Joker, and as far as he can tell, Joker didn’t take advantage of that. The first big clue pointing to that is that Bruce woke up at all, and doesn’t seem to be in agony. All his limbs are still attached, there’s no pain anywhere, no traps that he might trigger while his eyes do a careful scan of the room. 

Nothing. 

That’s…

 _Well_. Bruce sits up, massaging the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. He breathes out through his nose.

That’s definitely... something.

Besides, now that he’s slowly getting over the shock, it now occurs to Bruce that his unintentional show of vulnerability could, in the end, be a good thing. Maybe it would finally crack through the walls Joker erected around himself after the cave. 

God, please. 

Sitting up, Bruce now regards the travel clothes strewn carelessly around on the floor, and the rumpled sheets. He remembers the warmth of Joker’s kisses in full sunlight, the lightness of his laughter, the way he lay boneless over Bruce afterwards, his limbs heavy, his breath easy. He remembers the car ride and Joker’s forced but determined vivacity. 

Well. Bruce is wary of getting his hopes up but it _feels_ like progress, and soon, the panic makes way for the first rays of relief. 

Maybe Bruce wasn’t the only one getting tired of the tension. Maybe Joker needed the push for a fresh start, too.

Now if only they can keep it up.

He gives himself another couple of minutes, and then gingerly disentangles from the sheets wound around his legs. They made a bit of a mess of it, and Bruce is quietly glad that Alfred isn’t here to see it. 

It’s a surprisingly warm thought, helping to settle him even further. He gets on his feet and pads over to the ensuite bathroom, choosing not to bother about his nakedness; if his falling asleep was a show of trust, however unintentional, he might as well roll with it.

He knocks. “Joker?”

“Door’s open, darling.”

All right then. Bruce squares his shoulders and lets himself in.

Immediately steam presses up hot against his skin. The shower is turned off now but it’s clear it was running not long ago — the lime floral tiles on the floor and walls are still sweating condensation, and the mirror above the old-fashioned sink with gold-gleaming faucets — one for cold water, one for hot, which immediately strikes Bruce as rather impractical — is still fogged up.

Joker smiles at him from where he is perched on the rim of the narrow bathtub that sits beneath a little window near the ceiling. Much like Bruce he’s stark naked, his hair wet, one long leg on the fluffy white rug, the other raised on the tub as he massages some sort of translucent substance into the skin of his calf.

The bracelet is still on his wrist, a touch of cold in a scene that otherwise looks far warmer than it has any right to be. 

“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat,” Joker hums in greeting, smiling a lazy, sated smile. “Oh, how much I love your… hat.”

“Hat?” Bruce asks, grasping at amusement to cover up the swell of feelings that for a moment send him off-kilter. Relief, for one thing, bright and warm now because yeah, this is definitely progress. Joker hasn’t smiled at him like that since their first morning together.

But there’s also the fact that Bruce may never quite get used to the sight of Joker like this, planes of starkly white skin that seem to stretch on forever, an eerie, grotesque, almost supernatural body that still unsettles him no matter how often he sees it; especially like this, with Joker’s most intimate parts right there on display and proving that what sparse body hair he does have, it matches the shade of his hair exactly.

Bruce knew that, of course. That doesn’t make the sight any less unsettling, or Bruce’s reactions to it any less – volatile. Even now. 

Oblivious, Joker shrugs. “’Cock’ doesn’t quite rhyme. Had a nice nap?”

Bruce is still much too unbalanced — and tired — to attempt to address _that_ particular minefield. Instead, he points to the open jar sitting next to Joker on the rim of the tub. “You’ve been unpacking?”

“Hardly,” Joker scoffs. “I’ll leave the grunt work to you, sweetie, I know how much you love your workout. _I_ only got the essentials.”

Bruce regards the ‘essentials,’ which turn out to be cosmetics littered around the floor. He lands on the jar again. “What is that?”

“Oh, that little thing?” Joker scoops some sort of cream out of the jar and playfully rubs it between his fingers. “Body butter. Alfred was kind enough to order some more for me. As it happens, I was just about to start putting it on. I’m afraid you caught me in the middle of my bathroom routine.”

Oh? Intrigued, Bruce steps closer to get a better look. He recognizes the jar now as the same brand he got Joker all those months ago when he brought him cosmetics for the first time, and as he takes stock of the bathroom, he is momentarily overwhelmed by the sheer amount of different lotions and creams and makeup items, most of them of a variety he wouldn’t be able to name if his life depended on it. He swallows and meets Joker’s amused look.

“Can I watch?” he asks, and something in him thrills at the grin Joker gives him.

“My oh my,” he exclaims, touching his hand to his collarbone in a neat imitation of a scandalized Vivien Leigh. “Aren’t we adventurous this morning.”

Bruce shrugs. “Make it curious,” he admits with more ease than he feels; he grabs a towel at random from the door rack, spreads it over the closed toilet seat and sits down.

“Haven’t you had ample opportunity to quench that particular thirst when you were still playing Big Brother?” 

“This is different,” Bruce protests. “Back at the Manor you didn’t have all of… this. And it wasn’t like I watched you _all_ the time.”

“No?” Joker’s eyes twinkle with sharp amusement, and Bruce shrugs, conceding the point. 

“I know you always take a long time to get ready, but I guess I don’t really know much about…” he starts, and then pauses, considering. “You. Your skin,” he clarifies. “How it is after the...”

“Transmogrification?” Joker offers helpfully.

“Yeah, okay. If you want to call if that.”

“I should think you’ve already perused all there is to know on the topic.”

Bruce doesn’t bother denying it. “There isn’t all that much. Dr. Mulligan claims you’re hypersensitive.”

Joker snorts. “And you needed her to point it out to you, mister World’s Greatest Detective?”

Bruce refuses to rise to the bait. “So is that what these are for?” he points vaguely at the creams and lotions surrounding Joker like a dragon hoard. “Do they help? Or is it just… vanity?”

Joker’s brow furrows; he looks surprised by the question. “Why do you assume it’s a case of either or? They don’t have to cancel each other out, Batsy.”

Bruce’s heart sinks. “So it’s both.”

“Obviously.”

“J.” Bruce takes a deep breath, and decides that he may not get another chance to be this direct. He presses on. “Does it still hurt?”

Joker’s smile changes into something smaller, more subdued and just a little bittersweet as he looks down at his own body.

“Yes,” he says, and shrugs. “It never really stops.”

Bruce’s throat goes tight. He opens his mouth before he can even think about it. “I’m so—“

“Don’t,” Joker snaps at him, all traces of the smile wiped clean from his face. His eyes glitter up a dark storm as he fixes them on Bruce, freezing the words in his mouth. “Don’t you dare.”

His voice is dark enough that Bruce lets his mouth shut, though the barrage of _I’m sorrys_ still crowds against his teeth. He looks at Joker and once again takes in his chemically altered skin, toxic green hair, the bloody scar of his mouth. Joker wears it all so confidently, so well — well enough that it’s sometimes easy to forget that he wasn’t born to it. That none of it was his choice. That he only adapted to something tragic, much like…

_Like a boy dressing up as a bat to be something bigger than he is._

All those years. Jesus.

On some level, Bruce thinks he understands why Joker doesn’t appreciate him framing the ‘accident’ as something to regret, but…

No. Leave it, he tells himself. If he presses the matter now it will only explode in his face. Already Joker looks like he’s well on his way to receding back behind his walls, and Bruce has enough sense to know that if he expresses his sense guilt out loud it will only shatter their fragile peace to nothing, maybe for good this time.

Later. He’ll try again later. For now he struggles to push the storm of guilt to the back of his mind where it belongs, where he’ll carry it alone without selfishly hoping for some sort of — what, forgiveness? — and points to the uncorked tube of the translucent substance Joker had been rubbing into himself when Bruce came in.

“Walk me through it?” he asks, and knows that he’s made the right move as soon as some tiny bit of tension lets up in Joker’s body. He considers Bruce for another moment, probably trying to assess his motives, and Bruce quietly submits to the scrutiny, sitting still on the closed toilet seat.

“Oh, very well, since you insist on being a pest,” Joker allows, his long-suffering tone belied by the self-conscious way he fluffs up his hair with one hand. 

“Aloe vera,” he presents with panache, showing the tube to Bruce. “I put this on first. I was just about done with it. Give me a moment to finish up, won’t you, darling?”

“Okay,” Bruce says quietly, and sits still as Joker looks away from him and gets back to his own legs.

He takes his time squeezing the gel from the tube and massaging it into his legs methodically, inch by inch, going from the knee down and covering the entire foot as well. He does the same with the second calf, never once looking up at Bruce, and the tense set of his shoulders betrays feelings he obviously doesn’t want Bruce to comment on.

Not that Bruce could. Watching Joker’s hands roam over his own skin like this is…

It’s distracting. In a whole new way Bruce wasn’t prepared for.

And maybe Joker sensed the mood changing; when he puts the gel down, there’s the first hints of a smile back on his face, and he relaxes again when he catches Bruce’s eye. 

“Then the body butter,” he tells him. “So I can make myself baby smooth for you, dearest.”

Right. Okay. “Do you put it all over?”

“Everywhere I can reach, yes.”

Bruce catches onto the implication, and something in his stomach gives a twinge that’s equal parts excited and intimidated. He looks at the jar, then at Joker, who is now regarding him with open amusement, waiting for his move.

Right. Right.

“Do you need any help with that?” Bruce asks, and Joker’s smile eases into something gentle and bright that distracts Bruce all over again.

“That would be lovely,” Joker says, and offers Bruce the jar.

Bruce smiles back. He takes the jar from Joker and settles down on the rim of the tub behind him, and, seized by an impulse, kisses the back of Joker’s neck.

“Behave,” Joker tells him, laughing and swatting at him over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Bruce says, and shamelessly steals another kiss. Before Joker can protest Bruce dips three fingers into the jar at once, scoops out the smooth white substance and smears it down into the nape of Joker’s neck. Joker shudders, and in response, Bruce presses his fingers in deeper on the second go, making him gasp. 

Bruce pauses, his hand still on the nape of Joker’s neck. 

“Too much?” he asks, and is proud of how steady his voice sounds despite the fact that the sounds Joker made sent his blood rushing straight to his cock. 

Joker takes a moment, breathing out.

“Go on,” he prompts, and the challenge in his voice makes Bruce smile.

They pass the jar back and forth between them, Joker taking care of his chest and arms while Bruce rubs the cool, smooth cream into his neck, shoulders and back. He goes as slowly as he dares, taking care to reach every little inch of skin that starts off cold but warms up under his hands. He presses in deep, regular circles, massaging as well as rubbing, keeping the one-two-three count in his head.

And as he does, as he finally takes his time exploring, he feels out the raised tissue of old scars, touching and tracing each one in turn until he commits them to memory. He also notes the places on Joker’s body that, even under the aloe vera and the butter, feel coarser, rougher to his touch. As he focuses on them he notices that those places tend to be minimally grayer than the rest of Joker, patches of faint discoloration that take him by surprise. 

Is this where the acid bit deeper? Bruce presses lightly against those spots just in case, and tenses when Joker’s breath hitches at the barely-there touch.

“Sorry,” Bruce says reflexively. “Does this hurt?”

“Yes,” Joker tells him after a beat. “Don’t you dare stop.”

Bruce’s heart stutters, but after a brief moment of struggle he does as he’s bid. His hands keep moving, and he’s extra careful around the discolorations he can see even as he discovers other similar patches, even coarser to the touch, that don’t seem to elicit any sensation in Joker at all, even when Bruce gives them a hard prod.

He wonders if he’ll find similar spots on Joker’s face, sensitive or blunt, when he gets a closer look at it like this, without makeup. Probably. Thinking about it, he looks around and catches sight of white powders, foundation and face-paint littered on the floor, and understands what Joker meant about relief and vanity going hand in hand. 

Thought maybe, thinking about it, vanity isn’t the right word. Bruce isn’t sure. This is all new territory, and all he knows right now is that he’s eager to learn. 

And then cold realization drops on him all at once: _Joker didn’t have any of this at Arkham_. None of the make-up items _or_ the soothing, cooling creams. They wouldn’t allow it. And back at the Manor, Joker had gone months without any relief to his chronically burning skin before Bruce decided to bring him what, compared to everything Joker has now, was essentially scraps…

“Batsy,” Joker says in a tight, clipped voice. “You were doing so well. Cease this brooding at once, you great child, you’re ruining the mood.”

Bruce desperately wants to argue, to apologize, but he has enough sense to detect that it won’t end well. So he apologizes by pressing a long, warm kiss to the crook of Joker’s neck, and whispers, “Stand up for me?”

Joker complies, and once they’re both standing, Bruce sneaks a peek over Joker’s shoulder down his front. He smiles. Joker is already fully hard, the pale line of his cock jutting up against his stomach, and truth be told Bruce isn’t far behind. It helps. Bruce catches the surge of desire and uses it to switch the gears in his head, then steps in close, committing to the game. His hands slowly glide up Joker’s stomach and chest as his own cock briefly nestles in the cleft of Joker’s ass, and Bruce hugs him close like this, letting Joker know that they’re back on the same page. Letting him feel Bruce’s arousal building, filling up against his body.

“Bats,” Joker breathes.

“Shhh,” Bruce whispers into his shoulder, and kisses it. “I’m not done yet.”

Joker shudders and attempts to crane his neck to look at him, but Bruce is already stepping away and reaching for the jar. 

His hands, slick with cream, dip low to skim over the round swell of Joker’s ass in a playful hello. Bruce then brings them back up and begins to massage the butter in deep, regular strokes into Joker’s lower back, just below the jut of ribs, over the pronounced rise of hipbones and the planes of skin. As he goes lower and lower he cups each cheek in his hands and caresses them slow and hard, taking his time to enjoy the exploration the way he hadn’t had the opportunity and courage to do before. 

“How does it feel when I touch you?” he asks, his thumbs rubbing circles into the soft underside of the cheeks. “Does it hurt?”

Joker laughs, out of breath. “You wouldn’t possibly understand even if I tried to explain,” he manages. “Keep going.”

“I will,” Bruce promises, “unless you tell me to stop.” 

Joker doesn’t. 

So Bruce lingers for a while longer, kneading the firm muscles and enjoying their yield, the smooth slide of skin, the novelty of getting to do this at all. 

His cock is fully hard now but instead of moving back in like he wants to, Bruce drops to his knees and rubs the butter liberally into the back of Joker’s legs as well, with just as much care and attention. Only then does he get back on his feet and presses in close, hugging Joker from behind, gently rocking his hips into Joker’s and sighing in relief at the smooth, smooth glide of his cock between Joker’s cheeks. 

“That’s it, baby,” Joker hums, craning his neck to kiss Bruce’s chin. “Go on, let’s have some fun.” He clenches the muscles around Bruce and Bruce holds on tighter, the next thrust a little deeper, a little longer as Joker rocks back to meet him. The slick cream still hasn’t quite soaked into Joker’s back and it rubs into Bruce’s chest, making the slide of skin on skin nice and easy. 

It feels too good to resist. And Bruce doesn’t see why he should, not when Joker is making little encouraging noises and rocking back against Bruce as though it feels as good for him as it does for Bruce, slow but steady, clenching his newly-smooth, slippery body on every in-stroke in a way that has Bruce’s entire body thrumming with pleasure. They’re so close. So warm. Their bodies are touching nearly head to foot, sunlight edging in through the little window near the ceiling to fall soft and bright over them both like a blessing, and Bruce never imagined it could ever be like this. Not with this man, not with who they both are and what they’ve left behind. 

Now that it is, it feels too much like a dream, which should probably worry him if he had the presence of mind to think about it since the whole problem with dreams is that sooner or later, you’re gonna have to wake up. 

But not yet. God, not yet. 

“Do you like that?” Joker hums, rocking back hard against Bruce, trusting in the support of Bruce’s body. “You can let go, darling. Go on, I want you to.”

He angles his body to the side as he says it, and bends over to brace his hands against the rim of the tub for support. He grins at Bruce over his shoulder, open and warm. 

“Come on, baby,” he teases. “I know you’re ready.”

And Bruce is. He’s so ready he’s nearly going out of his mind with it, looking at Joker now, presenting himself for him like it’s the easiest thing in the world. It would feel so good to stand behind him now, cover him with his own body and rock between his thighs, nice and slow and perfect.

Then he notices the jar of body butter again, and the aloe vera, and thinks about burning skin.

Tempting as it is, Bruce doesn’t just want to take his pleasure from Joker and not give any back. And he might not get another chance like this. 

“Sit down,” he asks, hoping that he hasn’t miscalculated. 

Joker raises his eyebrow in a surprised arch. 

“Please,” Bruce whispers. 

Joker regards him for another second with suspicion stealing into his eyes, but then he does as he’s told, perching on the rim of the tub the way he did when Bruce came in but this time with both his impossibly long legs down on the tiles. 

His cock hasn’t let up any — it’s still tall and hard, the white skin flushed with hints of color. Bruce desperately wants to touch it. He makes himself look away, but he knows Joker’s noticed, which is probably a good thing. Bruce doesn’t want to surprise him, really. Not with this.

He gives them both time to build up to it though as he goes for the jar again, drops to his knees between Joker’s legs and massages the cream first into Joker’s feet, then up over the ankles and the calves, the sharp points of his knees. Joker is silent watching him, and kneeling before him like this, Bruce doesn’t dare look up. 

Only when he moves up to the thighs, slippery hands rubbing deep into muscle to touch every inch, does he lift his gaze to Joker’s cock again — it’s impossible to avoid now as it’s almost right in his face. It’s the closest Bruce has ever been to it; so close that he can see the traces of hair Joker has shaved, the veins jutting over the shaft, and — 

“What’s this?” he asks before he can stop himself, and reaches out to touch.

It looks like scars. Feels like it, too, little raised lines cut into the skin around the base of Joker’s cock.

Just like that, Bruce can’t feel the sunlight on his skin anymore.

“Batsy.” There’s a finger touching his cheek, gentle, tapping to get his attention. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.”

“They’re scars.” Finally Bruce raises his eyes to meet Joker’s. “How did you get scars here.”

“Hush now, darling.” Joker is smiling, but his eyes have gone dull. “Look at me. It’s nothing. I did this.”

Bruce’s heart stutters. “You?”

“Yes.” Joker shrugs. “Don’t ask me why though, I forget. I’m sure it made sense to me at the time.”

“It looks like —” Bruce swallows, and looks at the scars again. He touches them. 

_A razor blade_ , he thinks. _Small, double edged, the kind you can get at a gas station._ Bruce imagines Joker holding one, imagines him touching the blade to his own skin, and shivers on the tiles. 

“Bruce.”

He swallows again. The scars seem to scream at him. 

The finger on his cheek slides down and then hooks around his chin, and then Joker is forcing his head back up. “Bruce,” he repeats, and the use of his own name rather than Batsy, rather than any endearment, makes Bruce blink. 

Joker’s smile widens, and then he leans forward, covering Bruce’s hands with his own. This close their noses are nearly touching, and drying green hair tickles against Bruce’s forehead. 

“Look at me,” Joker commands in a soft, gentle voice. “Sometimes I get into strange moods, and then I do things you may not approve of or understand. I won’t always make sense to you, my sweet. I don’t always make sense to myself. You know this.” 

His hands are starting to move — over Bruce’s hands, up his forearms, circling his biceps to linger on his shoulders. 

“I do,” Bruce agrees, holding Joker’s gaze. He swallows and it scrapes going down. “But it’s getting better… right?” 

Joker’s hands are around his neck now. They squeeze, lightly, while Joker chuckles, the air from his mouth hot against Bruce’s. Any more pressure and Joker would be choking him. 

“Maybe,” he allows, though his tone is appeasing more than it is reassuring. Then his hands are cupping Bruce’s face, warm but firm. 

“Now,” he whispers, his eyes gone dark and half lidded as his face inches even closer to Bruce’s. “I do believe you were going to touch me inappropriately, mister Wayne.”

Bruce’s heart is thudding fast. He holds Joker’s gaze, though this close he can only focus on one eye at a time. “Will you let me?”

“I might,” Joker breathes, his lips brushing against Bruce’s, “if you’re good.” 

His hands are nudging Bruce’s face to angle it to the side, and when the kiss finally comes, Bruce is ready for it, opening up, gripping onto Joker’s thighs. He moves closer into the space between Joker’s legs, still on his knees, and lets Joker’s mouth distract him for the time being. 

Joker had only ever let Bruce touch him through pajama pants, that morning when he came to Bruce’s bed for comfort and distraction. Thinking of the creams and oils, of the comments about burning skin, Bruce is beginning to understand why. 

And if he’s right, then this… 

This is big.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Bruce whispers when Joker pulls away, to sit back up with one arm braced on the bathtub. “I only want to make you feel good. If it’s too much, I’ll stop.”

Joker’s free hand is carding through Bruce’s hair now. He looks thoughtful, then gives a little sigh, his fingers scratching lightly behind Bruce’s ear. 

“You know how I like pain,” he says, gazing down at the tiled floor. 

Bruce nods. 

“Well, the thing is, darling, there is good pain… very good pain… and then there’s the kind of pain even one such as I has to… shall we say, ration?” 

Bruce’s hands smooth up and down Joker’s thighs. “J.”

“Sometimes it does get a little bit… much,” Joker says, then follows it up with a nervous giggle. “Not that I’d trade my unique condition for anything, or that I _don’t_ want you touching me, but, well… this sensitivity thing…”

Bruce’s eyes slip to Joker’s cock again. “You only touched yourself three times back at the Manor,” he realizes. “In all this time. I thought it was because the meds affected your sex drive.”

“And they did,” Joker agrees. “To be fair, I’m not too sure that the past tense is entirely warranted, but that’s a matter for another time.”

“But that’s not all.”

“No.” The word is almost a whisper, only as loud as it needs to be to carry over the distance between them. “Not all.”

“It’s the bad pain?” Bruce guesses.

Joker looks conflicted, like the very idea of there being such a thing as bad pain, or even just pain he personally doesn’t enjoy, is inconceivable to him, or perhaps shameful.

“Let’s just say I need to be in a special kind of mood to indulge in madam palm and her five daughters,” he says at length, still looking away from Bruce. “Not to mention anything more… sensory-intensive.”

Bruce nods, thinking hard. Joker didn’t look to be in pain the three times he… indulged... back at the Manor, but then again, two of those times Bruce had overstimulated him to a point that Joker probably had little choice. And that first time, he’d been edging off a manic episode. Maybe that was one of those _special moods_. Maybe back then this kind of pain was better than the alternative, and even then, Joker had the distraction of fingers inside himself as well.

Maybe that part wasn’t entirely for show.

Right. 

“We don’t have to do this,” Bruce tells him, squeezing his thighs. “I didn’t realize. I just wanted to make you feel good, but if it’s too much then that’s fine. We can do something else.”

Joker is still looking conflicted, and thoughtful as he regards Bruce, stroking around his ear. 

Then he says, “Get the aloe vera.”

He stands up, and pulls Bruce up too once Bruce is holding the tube in his hand. He rests his hands over Bruce’s pectorals and draws little patterns there as if to brace himself, then moves in for another kiss, which Bruce gladly returns. Anything to make Joker comfortable. Anything to show him that when it comes to this, Bruce will follow his lead. 

“Here’s what we’re gonna do, my Dork Knight,” Joker announces, still standing close so that their bodies, including their dicks, are touching. Bruce wonders if even this much contact is too much. And then he remembers the scars, and wonders if they have anything to do with it, and the… bad kind of pain. 

Joker gestures to the tube. “Put that on me,” he says, “slowly. Don’t rub it in. Just… keep it light.” 

Bruce kisses the corner of his mouth. “Okay.”

Joker is still holding onto him, hands gliding up to Bruce’s shoulders, and rests his cheek against Bruce’s chest as Bruce uncorks the tube and squeezes some of the thick, translucent substance out. When Bruce glances to him, he sees that Joker’s eyes are closed. 

“Ready?” he asks. 

Joker nods, and then angles his body so that his hips face a bit to the side but his face buries into the crook of Bruce’s neck. He’s holding on tight. Bruce kisses his cheek, then the shell of his ear, and looks down. 

Slowly, he brings the gel-covered fingers down over Joker’s cock, which has now gone only half-hard but twitches when Bruce touches the shaft. 

He’s as gentle as he can coating generous amounts of the gel over Joker’s skin. Joker lets out a few strained sounds but he doesn’t use the safeword, and bites down into the skin of Bruce’s shoulder hard when Bruce — his hand now so slick that the glide is obscenely easy — slowly begins to move his hand up and down the thin shaft, not daring to touch the head yet.

It’s strange, touching another man like this, but Bruce doesn’t let the novelty of it distract him. He needs to be paying attention. 

“Is that okay?” he asks, and Joker hums into him, then bites down again even harder like he’s trying to find some sort of anchor in Bruce’s body. 

The grip around his shoulders is turning to vice. Joker’s nails are beginning to drag over the skin of his back, the bracelet stuttering hard on Bruce’s shoulder blades. 

“J. —”

“Put your fingers in me,” Joker breathes, his hips jerking like they can’t decide if they want to move into Bruce’s touch or away from it. “Distract me.” 

His hips are now angling towards Bruce, pressing in close. He spreads his legs a bit as he rocks himself into Bruce’s body, the gesture small and desperate like he doesn’t want to do it but can’t quite help himself. 

Bruce gulps, and lets the tube drop to the floor. For a white hot moment all he can do is put his arms around Joker’s slim body and hold him close, breathing into the cream-smooth skin of his shoulder. Then Joker rocks into him again, and Jesus, the tiny, jerky gesture shouldn’t be this hot, and yet — 

“Batsy,” Joker demands, roughly. “Fingers. Now.”

The hands on Bruce’s back turn into cutting pinpricks of pain, and Joker’s nails drag up to his shoulders so hard Bruce is sure it’s gonna leave a mark. His own cock twitches, and he bites down on Joker’s shoulder in return, holding him desperately close. 

Then he lets go and turns to look around. 

“The lube —”

“Forget it, we don’t need it,” Joker insists. “Your hands are slick enough already and I need the burn. Just do it.” 

Bruce isn’t entirely convinced it’s a good idea but, well, Joker does have a point — his fingers are now coated with body butter _and_ the aloe vera gel. It should be okay. 

He hopes. 

He still forces them apart for long enough that he can pick up the aloe vera tube and squeeze more of it out onto his fingers, then lets both his hands drop to Joker’s ass. He squeezes there, guiding Joker’s hips into a gentle rocking motion against his own body. They both moan when their cocks slide against each other, both once again fully hard. 

Joker’s leg comes up to hook over Bruce’s hip, bringing them closer still. “Batsy, I swear to all that’s unholy, if you’re going to make me ask one more time —”

“Let me guess: you’ll bite my ear off,” Bruce says as he lets one hand travel along the line of Joker’s buttock, then deeper down. 

“And then make you eat it,” Joker agrees. “He does learn fast, does our Batsy.” 

“You have no idea,” Bruce says into his ear, and circles Joker’s entrance with one finger. 

It does slip in easy. It probably helps that Bruce is more confident about it now, having done this a couple more times since their first night together, but Joker’s body opens up for him immediately, inviting him up to the first knuckle before he even thinks about taking it slow. He doesn’t need to ask if Joker is okay — the deeply satisfied sigh that tickles the skin of his neck is enough of a green light, and when his finger slips in deeper, Joker clenches his body around it, breathing out what can only be relief. 

“Good?” Bruce asks anyway, kissing his temple. 

He can’t see, but he’s pretty sure Joker has just rolled his eyes. 

“Good,” Joker assures him nonetheless, and catches Bruce’s mouth in a short kiss before it can retreat. “Keep moving, stud.”

Bruce gives Joker’s ass a light slap, and then he does keep moving, sliding his finger out to the last knuckle and then back in. Joker’s hips move with him, rocking back and forth, and each slide forward brings their cocks together in a way that makes Bruce shudder all over. 

By now he needs more friction for the touch to be satisfying rather than teasing but it’s fine, he can wait. He lets Joker set the pace and the pressure, only moving his own hips as much as it takes to meet Joker’s, and focuses on his finger massaging Joker’s body. The angle is awkward and not one he’s tried before, and he isn’t yet that familiar with Joker’s body, but he does his best to seek out the little nub that has Joker gasping, that — yeah, there. 

“Two fingers now, if you please,” Joker commands after a couple minutes of this, and Bruce obliges, trusting that Joker knows what he needs but still a little mesmerized — and baffled — at just how much Joker seems to enjoy having anything intrude inside him like this. 

Joker’s pace picks up now, his rocking gaining purpose; the pressure increases too as his body angles closer to Bruce’s. Bruce takes it as his cue to move in closer on his part, too, one hand busy pumping fingers inside of him while the other roams over Joker’s back, steadying as much as caressing, letting Joker leverage himself on his shoulders for balance. It’s an awkward, precarious position, and Bruce’s back is beginning to ache from the strain of holding them both upright like this, but the sheer relief of finally getting some real friction dulls Bruce to everything else and he’s kissing Joker’s neck, biting on it before he realizes what he’s doing. 

He scratches over Joker’s back as he does, too, and thrills at the moan he receives in response. 

Good sort of pain, he thinks, to distract from… the other sort of pain. 

Yes. Yes, Bruce can do that for him. He wants to. 

A moment later he has three fingers inside Joker, now confident enough to caress his prostate at every stroke. Joker is panting into his shoulder, his grip desperate, the drag of his nails painful against Bruce’s naked skin, the shock bracelet all but cutting into his back; and then one of his hands lets go to close around both their cocks at once, and he presses them in together, hard. 

And comes. 

His body goes completely still when it happens; his teeth come down hard on Bruce’s shoulder, and he lets out a strangled gasp. Bruce wraps one arm around him and holds on for all he’s worth, his hips stilling as Joker keeps them both in hand through his aftershocks — he doesn’t dare move, not even through his own desperate need that gets almost unbearable now in the face of Joker’s pleasure. 

“Batsy,” Joker whispers, breathless, into Bruce’s skin. “Bruce.”

Bruce brings his hand up to the back of Joker’s head, twists his fingers in his hair, and closes his eyes as his cheek rests against Joker’s. He isn’t sure he has any voice left.

Then, trapped between them, Joker’s hand moves. He lets his own cock slip away and closes his cum-covered fist around Bruce’s, alone. Bruce groans and lets his fingers slip out of Joker, holding onto him with both arms now, while Joker grips him hard and starts to pump his hand up and down almost viciously, violently, bringing Bruce right to the edge of pleasure and pain. 

It doesn’t take long at all, and then they both stand there breathing, weak-kneed and flushed, resting against each other and holding on.

And Bruce can’t quite articulate it, but he knows something has changed, right here, in this bathroom. Something important. He senses it in the air, and in the way their hearts beat in sync. 

Gained ground. A victory. Just how much, and how big, remains to be seen, but…

He closes his eyes and lets the moment wrap itself around them, pushing out everything else. 

“Look what you’ve done,” Joker teases, kissing Bruce, easing his hands up and down Bruce’s chest once they’re both ready to catch their breath. “You got me all messy. Now I’m gonna have to go through the whole routine again.”

“I’m not sorry,” Bruce says, and gets a light swat on the cheek for this. 

“Brute. We’re not all born billionaire dreamboats, you know. Some of us have to work for our debonair good looks.” 

“Is that what you have?”

“Obviously. And before you say anything else, please note that it’s bad form to insult the man who just got you off.”

“You called me a brute not two seconds ago,” Bruce points out, and kisses the corner of Joker’s mouth. 

“Ah, but that was a compliment.”

“Is that so?” Bruce mumbles, because his breath is still short and his brain feels all cottony, and he doesn’t have it in him to try for witty repartee just yet. Instead he hugs Joker, ignoring the way their cum sticks to their stomachs. 

“Join me in the shower?” Joker asks after a moment, and right here and now Bruce is hard pressed to think of a time in his life when anyone had a better idea. 

He is forced to reevaluate that when not two minutes later Joker is flicking soap right into his eyes, and trying to trip him up in the tub. The clown ends up winning this particular game by virtue of jumping on Bruce’s back, which causes them both to trip and land hard on their asses on the bathtub floor, at which point Joker declares the game over and leaves Bruce to finish showering in peace so that he can get a head start on the creams. 

This time, when Bruce does his back for him, he manages to not turn it into foreplay. 

Mostly.

He hangs around with a towel around his waist while Joker, mostly dry now, applies face, foot and hand creams separately and then starts on his makeup. It’s a fascinating process, and Bruce watches it closely leaning on the bathroom door so he doesn’t miss a single detail. Joker is as meticulous with the cosmetics as he is chaotic with everything else; it’s probably the only meticulous thing about him. Or at least it seems like it to Bruce, and he wonders, standing there and watching the careful but assured way Joker applies white powder to his face to give it a smooth, even tone, if this is the same kind of focus Joker used to display when he designed death traps for Batman to clear. 

There is something about Joker sitting in front of the mirror, drawing careful lines around his eyes or expertly brushing lipstick across his mouth to turn the scarring into a shiny, provocative gloss, that’s almost religious. Like the birth, or better yet, the creation — of someone who is definitely not the soft, warm J. who shivered in Bruce’s arms not half an hour ago, but who isn’t quite the Joker of Gotham either. Not when he catches Bruce staring out of the corner of his eye and sends him a smile that is almost, almost mischievous, but far too fond to be cruel. 

Then again, maybe Joker always looked at him like this, and Bruce was too stubborn to see it for what it was. 

And then he’s done, and looks far more himself than he did before, which is somehow unsettling and comforting all at once. 

He pats Bruce on the shoulder when he passes him on the way to the door. 

“Your turn, handsome.” 

And then he laughs, and keeps right on laughing as he thunders down the steps to the ground floor, which puzzles Bruce somewhat because he doesn’t see anything particularly funny about what Joker just said, or indeed, about the last twenty minutes. 

Puzzled, that is, until he finally gets to stand in front of the mirror for the first time since he woke up, and then the punchline becomes clear.

He’s had a crude lipstick drawing of a dick on his forehead the entire time. 

“Hurry up, dear, I’m hungry,” Joker calls from downstairs, still laughing. 

Bruce shakes his head, snorting at his own reflection. 

“One minute,” he calls back. 

He grabs a tube of lipstick at random. 

This means war.

 

***

 

“We’re fine, Alfred,” Bruce says into the phone some time later as Joker, now with smudged traces of a lipstick doodle still visible on his cheek, lounges on the floor and pores over the leaflet with rather limited dining options in the area that the cottage owner left for them. “No, really. I know, but we got a bit distracted, and then the jetlag — yes, I know. I’m sorry. I’m not dead. Neither is Joker. We’re going out out to dinner soon. Has there been any trouble? Is D—- Is Nightwing around? Please tell him I’m not dead and that I’ll text him soon. Thank you.”

“I want fish and chips,” Joker declares as soon as Bruce hangs up.

“You should call Nisha.”

Joker pulls a face. “Later. I texted her that we landed and that wonderful little jetlag excuse you used just now. Back to the matter at hand. Fish and chips, dearest, or would your aristocratic palate prefer something a touch less pedestrian?”

“Pedestrian is fine,” Bruce assures him. “Found anything?”

Joker has. Soon, their faces scrubbed mostly clean of incriminating evidence, they pile into the car — Bruce in a casual jeans and t-shirt with a light jacket thrown over the ensemble, and Joker in a purple shirt, green harem pants and the long coat, exchanging the trilby for a purple woollen beret and jamming Bruce’s shades on his face to, as he claims, go incognito. Bruce doesn’t have it in him to argue that the get-up makes Joker somehow even more conspicuous than his usual purple outfits, and they pull out to the driveway and out onto the road to make it just before closing time in the nearest Tesco. 

Bruce never regarded grocery shopping as anything particularly exciting. Apparently he was wrong. By the time they make it out of the store, Bruce all but manhandling Joker away by his elbow, Joker has managed to laugh himself into hiccups over, among other things: 

bananas  
British yoghurt  
weirdly-shaped potatoes (“This one looks just like Freeze’s head!”)  
frozen Admiral’s Pie   
eyesore pink flip-flops, which Bruce eventually ended up getting for him  
more bananas, which Bruce also let him pile into the cart, suspecting deep down that it was probably a mistake  
soap  
tiny cans of Heineken. 

 

“He doesn’t get out much,” Bruce explains to the bewildered cashier as Joker giggles on his arm. 

“We’re Americans,” Joker adds helpfully, to which the cashier gives an understanding nod.

Bruce wonders if the next time they come over the staff will even let them inside. 

But the good news is that Joker only tried to shoplift one thing — the flip-flops — and other than trying to touch absolutely everything and getting strangely mauldin over a bottle of hot sauce, which he also tossed into the cart, he behaved. 

Mostly. 

Bruce may have armfuls of shopping bags filled with junk he knows he won’t touch as a result, and Joker’s hands may be twitching more than usual by the end of it, but he still counts the trip as a success, overall. 

Next, they set off for the pub Joker found. Upon some negotiation Bruce goes in alone and orders the fish and chips with some starters to go, and lets Joker guard the warm, fragrant styrofoam containers on the short drive back home.

By the time they get back to the cottage the entire car smells like vinegar and Joker’s pants are stained with grease that somehow spilled through the containers and the plastic bag.

It doesn’t matter. They set the food out on the little table in front of the TV, and then Bruce turns it on. The cottage is equipped with Netflix and they spend the next fifteen minutes arguing over what to put on until they both agree on _Catch Me If You Can_. 

Soon Bruce’s clothes have grease stains on them too, and he doesn’t care. 

Not when Joker is cuddling up to him, bringing Reggie over them both, commenting quietly on the movie and giggling like he used to back at the Manor. It would almost be nostalgic except there’s no guards to force them to keep their distance this time, and the result is something warm, almost disturbingly so. Bruce catches himself looking around the cottage and at Joker more than once because his brain still stutters on the idea that this is really happening. 

He thinks maybe Joker’s brain is doing the same thing. His hands twitch over Bruce’s chest from time to time, tapping out a familiar rhythm, one-two-three. Like he needs it to center him in this new…

Whatever this is. 

Bruce thinks he understands. The rhythm centers him, too. 

They don’t make it upstairs that night — after the movie ends Joker suggests to roll out the couch, and they settle down again on the pillows, their legs stretched out, the blanket fitted over them both. Bruce lets Joker choose the movie this time and finds himself barely paying attention. He’s more content than he ever remembers being, his stomach warm and heavy with food, his heart warm and heavy with something else entirely while Joker settles comfortably in his arms, his body fitting perfectly against Bruce’s own. 

His eyelids grow heavy halfway through the movie, and this time, he doesn’t try to fight it. 

 

***

 

There are no dick drawings on his face when he wakes up with a start sometime later; but he is wet all over, lying in a puddle of icy cold water that’s seeped into the pillows and drips from his hair. 

A quick inspection reveals the following. 

One bucket, empty now, dropped by the sofa. 

A dozen ice cubes, rapidly melting into Bruce’s skin and the pillows and the unfortunate blanket. 

And one Clown Prince of Crime, slapping himself on the knees and laughing for all he’s worth. 

All things considered, Bruce thinks that he accepts this state of affairs with remarkable stoicism. 

Right up until he grabs a handful of those ice cubes that still haven’t melted, launches himself off the sofa and tackles the squealing Joker to the floor, pouring the ice down the back of his shirt. Joker tries to wrestle him and Bruce rolls along with it, and soon, the cabin fills with a different sort of sound altogether. 

 

***

 

The next morning, as Bruce applies his limited but serviceable skills to make them both breakfast, Joker announces that they should have a picnic. 

“We’re in the country,” he argues, “might as well embrace it. Whadya say, partner, wanna get outdoorsy? Climb that mountain so we can show Alfred that we did something other than laze about in the house?”

“You’ll hate it,” Bruce predicts, but Joker is having none of his logic and nags him until Bruce agrees; then he sets off to grab a picnic basket from God knows where and pile it full of crap he considers acceptable picnic food. 

Bruce makes him call Nisha and his parole officer before they set out, and respectfully keeps out of the way while Joker goes upstairs to make the phone calls. Bruce can hear him talking and pacing overhead, trying not to eavesdrop; and when Joker finally makes his way back down about an hour and a half later he tosses the phone at Bruce. 

“What am I supposed to do with it?” Bruce asks.

“Why, check it, of course.” Joker’s tone is condescending. “Make sure I didn’t call or text anyone else in the meantime, didn’t do anything illegal, the works. I’m sure you’re itching for it.”

Bruce is. Or at least, a part of him is, the same part that is quietly relieved every time it sees the gleam of the bracelet at Joker’s wrist.

Joker is watching him with a sharp half-smile, waiting. 

Then, after a minute passes without Bruce making a move, he sighs, grabs the phone, unlocks it and all but shoves it into Bruce’s face. 

“Go on, cupcake, have a lil’ rummage around. Knock yourself out. I’m gonna get on with the packing.”

Bruce is still looking at the phone. In his peripheral vision Joker bustles around the fridge and the picnic basket, humming to himself out of tune, but Bruce still feels the heat of sharp green eyes on him all through the pretence. 

He knows he probably _should_ check the phone. This is bait, and as with everything else Joker does, it’s layered with meanings that will put Bruce on the losing side no matter what he does. Maybe the test is only outwardly meant to measure Bruce’s trust, and hides something more sinister underneath. Maybe Joker _wants_ him to look through the phone, and prove some nebulous point. 

Bruce stares at the phone for another moment, then meets Joker’s glance from across the kitchen counter. 

Slowly, he reaches out to touch the phone.

And then pushes it away, towards Joker, across the counter. 

“I’ll go get the other blanket from upstairs,” he says. “Yours wasn’t made for the grass.”

He risks a glance at Joker before he climbs upstairs — just one, to gauge the verdict.

Joker’s head is bowed but he’s smiling, touching the phone’s black screen with the tips of his fingers. 

Bruce lets out a breath, then starts on the climb.

He wonders if there will ever come a time when everything between them will _not_ be some sort of test, one way or another. 

 

***

 

Predictably, Bruce has to carry the basket, and then — even more predictably — the Joker himself when, halfway up the hill, Joker decides that he’s bored and that he does, indeed, hate hiking. 

That’s fine. Joker still weighs next to nothing where he’s latched to Bruce’s back like a spindly koala and Bruce doesn’t mind the exercise, considering he has lapsed in his usual workout routine over the last two days. The day is cloudy and brisk, the sky bearing down on them with a grey sheen that would remind Bruce of Gotham if not for the fact that the air in Gotham never tastes this fresh and clear; and the hiking trail slopes up through a thick maze of forest that filters what sparse sunlight there is in glittery patches shifting on the ground as the wind jostles the canopy of leaves around over their heads. 

It would be a calm scene — serene, even — if Joker didn’t insist on improvising army-style marching chants for Bruce to hike to, each more vulgar than the last. 

Bruce is just glad they don’t run into any other hikers on the way. 

Later, when they settle on a spot near the top of the hill that Joker deems appropriately pastoral — a clearing on the edge of a steeper drop, with a striking view of the loch below — and work their way through the food that mostly consists of candy bars and bananas, Joker takes out a book be stashed away at the very bottom.

“Romantic poetry?” Bruce questions when Joker offers the book to him. 

“Of course.” Joker’s smile is an almost gentle curve. “When I do something, honey, I do it all the way. There’s no romantic picnics without poetry. Your dear old J. thinks of everything.”

“Apparently.” Bruce leafs through the book to reach the bookmarked pages. “Okay then. Here goes nothing.” 

Bruce isn’t the best at poetry — he’d never seen the point of it, or in making an effort to understand it, much to Alfred’s dismay — though that’s not the same as saying he isn’t well-versed in the stuff. He can quote and bandy references around with the best of them if need be, and more than once it proved crucial to cracking a case, especially with his more… colorful enemies involved (present company included). But he never saw the point in developing a taste for it. 

He tries his best now, reading from the eclectic selection Joker prepared for him, and in the meantime, Joker lies down on the blanket with his head pillowed on Bruce’s thigh. Once again it reminds Bruce of the Manor, and much like during the movie the night before, he takes advantage of their newfound freedom to run his fingers through Joker’s hair as he reads. 

And it’s… good. It feels good. For as long as it lasts, Bruce lets himself enjoy it, and eventually he puts the book down to lie back himself, still carding his fingers through Joker’s hair. 

He brims with something warm that, he thinks, has been building in him for a while. This feels like the right moment to put it in words. 

“Thank you,” he whispers. 

“Hmm?” Joker is moving, knitting his hands over Bruce’s chest to gaze up at him. 

It’s not at all difficult to smile at him now, with the backdrop of trees, singing birds and the lake below. It’s quite possibly one of the easiest smiles Bruce has ever worn. 

He touches his hand to Joker’s cheek. “Just… thank you. For being here. For doing this.”

Joker doesn’t smile back. He regards Bruce for a moment, his eyes going dark, and his mouth twitches with tension that makes Bruce go cold; but in the very next moment he closes his eyes and does angle his head into Bruce’s touch. He takes Bruce’s hand in his and kisses his fingers, one by one, without looking.

Bruce swallows. He brings his other hand to push strands of hair behind Joker’s ear. “Come here,” he pleads.

Joker hesitates again, but then he does. He climbs up Bruce’s body to lie next to him, side by side, one hand crooked at the elbow and pillowing his head and the other laying down over Bruce’s chest. His leg hooks over Bruce’s, and Bruce moves in close, touching his face.

 _Thank you_ , Bruce wants to say again, looking into Joker’s green eyes, but doesn’t think he could, a second time. He kisses Joker instead, and sighs in relief when Joker doesn’t push him away. 

They kiss slowly, touching each other, as the wind whispers in the trees above them. Bruce closes his eyes and tastes chocolate; he focuses on the texture of Joker’s scarred mouth under the oily taste of the lipstick. Their mouths stay closed through this, never pushing for more, and while it lasts, it’s startlingly easy to let everything else drop away. 

Right up until the bracelet on Joker’s hand starts up a shrill noise that sends shockwaves rippling into the trees. 

“Ooops,” Joker giggles, pulling away from Bruce. “Maybe you should design a different ringtone for this doohickey. This one is a bit of a mood buster.”

He’s pushing up, and so is Bruce, trying not to mourn the warmth that is rapidly draining away from the clearing. He watches Joker rummage in the inner pocket of his coat for the meds vial; watches him swallow the pills down, his face breaking into a brief grimace of distaste before he washes them down with water. 

Joker isn’t looking at him anymore, and Bruce’s throat goes tight. 

He leans over and kisses Joker’s cheek, because he doesn’t know what else he can do to make this better.

Joker brings his knees up, hugging them. He doesn’t look up, or smile. 

“J. —”

“We should probably head back, don’t you think?” Joker whispers.

“Yeah.” Bruce sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, probably. It’s gonna get dark soon.”

“Between you and I, darling, I don’t think we have anything to be afraid of,” Joker teases, and somehow, his attempt at a smile now feels even rawer than the silence before it did. 

“I would still prefer to avoid getting lost.” Bruce moves to stand up, then helps Joker to his feet as well. 

He starts packing up, and while he does, Joker comes to stand near the drop, overlooking the lake below. 

“It’s rather fun, isn’t it?” he asks softly, so softly that Bruce almost loses it in the gentle whoosh of the wind. 

He pauses, blanket half-folded. “What is?”

“Playing at being normal.” Joker shoots him a smile over his shoulder, stepping closer to the edge of the rock. “I can almost see why you like it so much. There’s a certain sense of… _je ne sais quoi_ about the whole thing. A game of play pretend. I’ve always been good at that.”

Bruce swallows, slowly folding the blanket in his arms. “I’m not sure that I’ve been pretending.”

He catches Joker’s smile widening just before Joker turns to face the lake again. He steps even closer to the ledge. “No, I guess you wouldn’t be sure. You’ve always had this annoying need to convince yourself you can be one of them. It’s endearing, really. You keep trying so hard to fit in, to believe that you are a part of something you’re not. And now you’re trying to convince me to play along, too.”

“J., come on.” Bruce drops the blanket over the basket, straightening up. “Get away from that ledge. It’s time to go.”

Joker doesn’t move, and Bruce’s heart climbs up to his throat. His muscles prime and lock to instant reaction mode before he even realizes he’s doing it.

“Joker,” he tries. 

“It’s fine enough for now, I suppose,” Joker muses, still looking out over the loch. A stronger gust of wind tangles in his hair, tearing at the flaps of his coat, fanning it out behind him almost like a cape. He turns his head to look at Bruce. “I guess can play at being normal for a little while longer.”

He smiles. And tips his whole body back.

Bruce is already moving before Joker’s leg can slip off the rock. He catches him by the arm and pulls Joker sharply towards him, to collide against his chest, and holds on tight, his heart pounding a mile a minute while Joker laughs cruelly into his shoulder. 

Bruce’s fist closes in Joker’s hair tight enough to pull. 

“Don’t,” he forces through gritted teeth, through the blinding sheen of cold, cold panic, through the adrenaline spike setting his blood to boil. “Don’t ever do that again. Jesus, Joker.”

Joker is still laughing as he pulls away, patting Bruce’s face. 

“I knew you’d catch me, doll,” he sings, moving to pass Bruce into the clearing. “You always do.” 

“I’m serious.” Bruce’s grip on Joker’s arm doesn’t relent, and only tightens when Joker tries to pull free. “This isn’t a game.”

“Of course it is. And we’re having fun. Aren’t we, Batsy?”

“So what, that was you pretending to be normal?” 

“Oh, no.” Joker’s smile is sharp in the cooling air. “That was just a little bit of… reenactment. A reminder, if you will. To get the blood pumping. So, are we racing to the bottom or what?”

“No.” Bruce tries to settle his breath, still holding onto Joker’s arm. The panic is only just beginning to recede. He can still see Joker’s body tipping back, and falling, crashing down the slope, Bruce missing his hand by mere inches. Again. “I mean it, J.” he presses. “Please don’t do that again.”

Joker’s smile changes. He comes up to Bruce, and leans in to kiss his cheek. 

“I almost forgot how sweet you can be when you get all protective,” he purrs. “But let’s not go overboard, shall we? We’re not _that_ high up. I’ve leapt off of buildings taller than this glorified molehill, and guess what? You were always there to break my fall.” 

This time, when he pulls away, Bruce lets him.

“Now come on,” Joker hums, picking up the basket from the ground. “The mosquitoes are starting to go haywire and all this nature is bad for my complexion.”

He leads the way down the hill, and Bruce follows, watching the back of his head. 

He thinks about Joker’s words all the way down, helpless anger slowly catching up where fear has now subsided. 

He wonders what Joker would have done if Bruce stood on that ledge beside him. 

 

***

 

He is still turning it all around in his head when, hours later, he lies next to Joker in the queen-sized bed in the upstairs bedroom in the dark, Joker’s hands roaming, lazy and appraising, over his muscles. 

He knows he won’t get any clear answers tonight, or maybe at all. He knows it’s a puzzle piece for him to figure out, that Joker _wanted_ for him to worry it all raw. For him to get angry. 

And he still is. 

He just isn’t sure he wants this anger to define how he deals with it this time. 

He catches Joker’s hand between his own, and looks up into a pair of curious green eyes hovering over him.

“Okay,” he whispers into the darkness.

Joker cocks his head to the side, propping his chin up on his fist. 

“Okay, gorgeous?”

“Okay. It is a game. Or a dance, or whatever you want to call it. Fine.”

He can see the gleam of sharp white teeth in the darkness. “And?”

“And,” Bruce takes a deep breath, “you’re trying to make me doubt whether or not I’m winning. Because there has to be a winner and a loser, right? Otherwise it’s not a game at all.”

_And you can’t stand the thought of the loser being you._

Joker considers him in the silence, drawing shapes over Bruce’s chest. 

“I’m just wondering,” Bruce whispers, “if it _has_ to be this way. One of us either winning or losing. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the game can now be… both of us. Together.”

“Against what?”

“Everything else.”

“Hmm.” Joker thinks about it, or pretends to, his sharp fingernails now circling the skin just over Bruce’s heart. “Batman and the Joker contra mundi. Does have a certain ring to it, I admit. I’m just not sure it’s entirely feasible, darling, us being… us.”

No, Bruce isn’t sure either. But it’s worth talking about, at least. 

“I suppose,” he starts quietly, “I don’t like the thought of this whole… thing. Everything you’ve achieved.” Bruce squeezes Joker’s hand in his own. “To be framed as either a loss or a win, because we’re in this together now. It’s going to be hell when we go back to Gotham. I’m going to need you in my corner.”

“Would you look at that.” Joker whistles, moving his hand to cup Bruce’s cheek. “You’ve kept your word and actually went to therapy, haven’t you? And now you’re all gung-ho and ready to tackle this pesky business of feelings head-on. I’m very proud of you.”

“I’m trying,” Bruce tells him, letting the mockery wash right off him. Recognizing it for the defense mechanism it is. “Same as you.”

“That’s sweet. Hopelessly naive and entirely impossible, but sweet.” Joker leans in to kiss him on the lips, shallow but warm. 

“Is it really that hard to imagine us not fighting one another?” Bruce asks, moving his hand to the back of Joker’s neck. 

Joker chuckles and pokes Bruce in the chest. “Oh please, baby, don’t let’s have none of that. I wouldn’t know how to stop baiting you any more than you would know how to ignore it.” 

Yeah. Yeah, it’s true. And Bruce knows it. He isn’t even sure, deep down, that he’s as keen on the idea as he tried to project. 

But it’s a nice thought. And something they could at least try to work towards, Bruce thinks, remembering his conversation with Alfred over sherry. He says as much, and Joker laughs again, and Bruce doesn’t even have it in him to mind it. 

“I suppose we could,” Joker allows. “Stranger things have happened. We _are_ here, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” Bruce agrees, winding his arm around Joker. “Yeah, we are.” 

He moves to roll them over, pushing Joker off himself and onto his back. Joker gives a satisfied hum and opens up for Bruce’s kiss, bringing his hands around Bruce’s neck, and that seems to be it; Bruce knows that the conversation is far from over, but they seem to be done for the night, not quite at peace but maybe not outright at war anymore either. He kisses harder, not letting any of the anger bleed into it this time. 

Tonight, he wants to do better. 

“Something on your mind, dearest?” Joker whispers against Bruce’s lips. 

“Yes.” Bruce kisses him again, and then asks, “Teach me. I want to learn what you like.”

“You _know_ what I like.” 

“I want to learn more,” Bruce insists. “Show me where to touch you.”

There’s a strange light in Joker’s eyes as he looks up at Bruce, biting slightly on his own bottom lip. He’s calculating, Bruce thinks, and almost laughs at the realization, and then at himself for ever hoping that things could ever stay easy between them. 

For all he knows, this is a battlefield to Joker, too, just like the picnic was. Just like the moment they shared in the bathroom probably was as well. Just like everything else is, every step of the way. 

And maybe it is for Bruce too. 

“Promise you won’t make it too sappy,” Joker says after a moment’s hesitation. “I can only take so much of this normie stuff. You know what I _really_ need from you.”

“You’ll get it,” Bruce promises. “I just need to know what I’m doing first.”

“Fair enough.” Joker chuckles, and if the sound stutters a bit, well, Bruce is not about to bring it up. “All right. Attend, young padawan. When a clown and a bat love each other very much…”

Bruce leans down to nip at Joker’s neck, and is happy to see that it has the desired effect; Joker gasps, grabbing onto him, and finally looks like he’s ready to start treating Bruce’s request seriously. 

“Good start,” he breathes, and Bruce smiles against his neck. 

“Like that?” he asks.

Joker hums, caressing the back of Bruce’s neck. “Now do it again but harder.”

“Same spot?” 

“Yes, but just the once. Make it deep. As deep as you can. Then move down.” 

And so Bruce does as he’s told, sucking a bruise into Joker’s neck, and then another, and another while Joker guides him with his hands and warm, quiet words. For the first time, he lets Bruce take it truly slow, one sensation at a time, and even lets Bruce kiss his cock briefly, gently, once Bruce works him to overstimulation. 

He never quite loses control though, not even when Bruce finally mounts him and Joker teaches him about angles, and depth, and speed, bright-eyed and breathless but still coherent, still guiding him with words as well as sounds and the tight grip he has on Bruce’s slippery back. 

And Bruce gazes down at him through it all, watching every little flicker of sensation on his face, and loves him so much his own eyes begin to sting.

Dawn is spilling outside by the time they collapse against one another, breathless and spent; and Bruce drifts into deep, heavy sleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow, with Joker’s hand in his hair. 

 

***

 

He stirs awake just in time to see Joker reach for his meds. 

He watches in silence as Joker takes them, soft and sleep-ruffled much like Bruce is, and so very warm in his arms. 

_Thank you_ , he wants to repeat, because his mind is light and rested, and his heart feels heavy but in the good way, brimming with something raw and scary but all the more wonderful for it.

He kisses Joker instead, and hopes it’s enough.

 

***

 

The next few days see them settle into a certain rhythm that’s as close to a domestic routine as Bruce thinks they can get. 

He helps Joker with the creams once they get up every morning, and then watches him put on makeup, the process still as fascinating as that first morning. Then, he lets Joker make his required check-in calls with Nisha and his parole officer and heads down to call Alfred, run through his exercises out in the garden and then make them breakfast, which Joker either eats with him or doesn’t, depending on his mood. 

Then, they go for a long drive to see all the ruins and other historical sites nearby; or on another picnic, down by the lake shore this time, at the end of which Joker decides to shed all his clothes and run into the freezing water, leaving Bruce no choice but to follow; or they stay in when the day turns rainy, marathoning movies Bruce doesn’t remember. 

They read together, too, like they used to in the Manor, and play cards — or the board games the owner left for them — and when they talk, they don’t try to broach anything that could potentially turn into a fight. 

Try being the key word here. It somehow devolves into potential fights anyway, more often than not; but Joker doesn’t seem interested in pushing Bruce again, and Bruce appreciates it, and tries to learn how to back off for his part.

Joker seems to want to save the tension for the bedroom, which is just fine with Bruce. He still keeps a tight grip on himself, does his best not to lose control as he learns Joker’s body by heart and lets Joker learn his in turn; but he lets himself go a little bit more every night, and from the gleam in Joker’s eye, he finally accepts that it might be a good thing. 

He still kisses Joker every time he sees him taking the meds. 

Right until Joker moves his face away and stiffens in his arms, and the hurt that flares in Bruce at this feels unfair to Joker but raw and cutting all the same. 

He doesn’t do it again after that. 

Still, for the most part, it’s good — far better than Bruce could ever hope to expect. 

They play normal. And for the most part, they make it work.

Then the week is up and they pack up to move to the other house they booked, closer to Edinburgh and civilization. The plan is that they’ll venture out to the city in the evenings, maybe venture out to Glasgow as well, and let themselves be spotted together to pave the way for more speculation. Joker is giddy with it all day, rambling about all the compromising positions they should be photographed in as Bruce carries their luggage back to the car.

For his part, Bruce isn’t excited at all — to the point that he almost asks Joker to change their plans and stay here for the next week as well. He can’t explain it, but there’s a sense of foreboding at the back of his mind when he locks the door to the cottage and gets into the car — as if leaving the space where they were able to find some measure of peace and connection will only lead to something bad.

The feeling is still there when he starts the car and leads it down the driveway, watching the cottage disappear in the rear view mirror. 

But then Joker chooses Doris Day as their soundtrack once they get on the road, and sticks his hand out the open window as he croons out love ballads with a lopsided grin at Bruce, and Bruce takes a deep breath, forcing himself to relax. 

It’s gonna be all right. They made it so far; if they just keep it up, there’s no reason to expect that they wouldn’t make it another week.

Bruce tries to smile at the prospect of getting to go to a coffee shop with Joker — an actual _date_ — and speeds up, and breaks speed limits just to hear Joker’s happy cries. He decides to take the scenic route, stretching the moment out as long as he can. 

Later, he really wishes he hadn’t. 

Because eventually Joker’s phone battery dies, so he switches to radio, and as soon as he does a neutral female voice informs them: 

“Thirteen dead and fifty-seven injured after the latest attack on Metropolis, as an unidentified enemy with metahuman powers caused an explosion in midtown at 9am this morning —”

“Ooops,” Joker laughs, settling comfortably in his seat. “Looks like your super friend had an exciting morning. Still not as exciting as ours, I’d say.”

Bruce no longer hears the news anchor’s voice. He’s staring ahead, slowing the car down, until he’s ready to look at Joker. 

“This isn’t funny,” he says sharply. “People died.”

Joker shrugs. His smile is cruel and entirely unrepentant. “That’s exactly why it’s funny.”

“Joker.” 

“Oh come now, darling. Think of it this way. It was Metropolis; they hardly count as people.”

Bruce swerves off to the side and stops the car so abruptly he nearly jams his forehead against the steering wheel; he has to get out.

He stands there for a long time, leaning against the car, staring out into the fields. He isn’t sure it’s helping — his mind is still a teeming mass of conflict when he finally gets back in, and gets worse when he sees that Joker is still smiling. 

Bruce starts the car in silence, keeping the radio off; but it’s not long before he finds himself snapping, “I don’t want you joking about this.”

“No promises,” Joker shrugs, examining his nails. “The terms of our agreement never mentioned anything about that.”

“Joker.”

“ _What?_ Am I being too crass for your delicate sensibilities? Would you like me to pretend to clutch my pearls like everyone else? If so, then let me ask you this: why did you choose me in the first place?”

“You think I don’t wonder about that?” Bruce murmurs, hands tight on the wheel, and when he glances over, Joker’s smile has only grown wider. 

“Touché,” he says. “But really now, come on. You didn’t honestly expect me to — what? Learn remorse?” he challenges. “Is that what you want from me? No, I don’t think so, honey. Then I wouldn’t be able to be your mirror anymore, and you’d hate me.”

“This isn’t about — about mirrors, whatever the hell that means,” Bruce snaps. “I’m only asking that you show some respect for human life every once in a while.”

“And why should I? Why would you want me to? Think about it, baby: if I had that respect, then I’d have to reflect on all the people I hurt or killed. And if I did _that_ , there would be no more balance between us, because I’d turn into you. Given everything I’ve done, if I actually felt anything about that, I’d have to necessarily turn into a guilt-ridden vegetable. I don’t think you’d want that from me. You’d hate me. I’d start reflecting you in all the wrong ways.”

“I have no idea what that means.” 

“I think you do.”

“I’m not in the mood for this, Joker.” 

“Well, you started it.”

“You can’t just —”

“Be myself?” Now Joker’s voice goes sharp too, and raises. “Or is it just reminders of that that you take exception to?”

“Does being yourself mean that you’re going to laugh at every tragedy?” 

“And if so, then what?” Joker’s voice drops quiet now. “If I don’t pretend to respect those dumb little shadow puppets and cry about thoughts and prayers every time one of them happens to kick the bucket, will you cast me out?”

Bruce almost stops the car again, but he makes himself keep on going. He doesn’t have an answer to that; he thinks Joker didn’t expect one. He seems to be content having the last word, and goes back to painting his nails as though the entire exchange never happened.

That doesn’t stop its shadow from settling over them and digging deeper with each passing minute of silence. It’s clawed into Bruce’s throat and deeper down, pinching at his chest by the time they swerve on the dirt road cutting through a dense forest and eventually arrive at the the other cottage, this one bigger than the last, tucked away deep in the middle of the woods about an hour away from Edinburgh. 

Joker is still wearing that cruel, mocking smile as he watches Bruce unpack, and suddenly Bruce can’t bear to see his face anymore. 

“I’m going for a run,” he declares, and only delays for as long as it takes him to change into sweatpants and a t-shirt before he takes off down the driveway, feeling Joker’s eyes on the back of his head. 

He runs along the road they came through until his lungs burn, until his legs shake; and then pauses in the middle of it, the forest bearing in on him from both sides, the sky getting steadily darker over his head. 

He takes his phone out, and chooses the number. 

Dick answers almost immediately. 

“How’s the honeymoon going?” he asks in a voice that’s only slightly strained, and Bruce is instantly grateful for him. God, he never realized how desperately needed to hear his voice till now. 

“We’re having our ups and downs,” he says dismissively.

“Uh-huh. And let me guess: this is the downs?” 

“How’s Gotham?” Bruce asks, ignoring the judgment; what he really needs right now is a distraction.

“Same,” Dick says after a moment. “Ivy showed up briefly in Robinson Park, but when I went there she was gone again. It’s probably a safe bet that she’s back in the city for good though.” 

Bruce nods. “Don’t try to look for her on your own.”

“Yes, _dad_ ,” Dick sighs. 

“Any news of Quinzel?” 

“There’s been two more novelty store robberies, and word on the street is that someone’s been reaching out to the Joker gangs. We haven’t caught her on any cams yet, but if it’s not her then we have another copycat on our hands.”

“Do you need me there?”

“Nah, we’ve got it,” Dick assures him, and Bruce doesn’t quite know what to do with the way his heart pulls at this. “Other than that it’s been pretty quiet. Most of the usual suspects are still sitting tight in Arkham. So, you know... go ahead and enjoy your quality clown time.”

Bruce lets himself smirk over the weight in his chest. “It sounds wrong when you say it like that, doesn’t it.”

“You’re telling me. So, what’s it like over there? You all right? Is the clown giving you a hard time?” Now there’s concern coloring the forced lightness of Dick’s voice, and Bruce is quietly grateful for that, too, despite everything. 

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he murmurs. 

“Ugh. That sounded even worse. I think I’m gonna hang up now and pretend I’m not imagining you handling him.”

“You’re too young for that, anyway,” Bruce agrees, mostly because he desperately needs that tiny bit of levity now, and Dick indulges him by making retching noises into the phone. 

“Keep me posted if something serious happens,” Bruce says, and ends the call. 

He still doesn’t know if he’s ready to face Joker yet, so he takes his time walking instead of running on the way back, enjoying the first longer moment of solitude he’s had all week. He thinks he needed that. The wind blows cold on his face, the air tastes clean, and the run has brought his body to the relaxed tingle of post-exercise glow that almost, almost helps him put the fight with Joker out of his mind…

But of course once he remembers it he finds himself worrying it around in his head all over again, and getting to the point of boiling. At this point he isn’t sure if he’s angrier at Joker or at himself. 

Nisha warned him. She _told_ him not to expect miracles, and yet he still let his own guard down to the point where he managed to forget just who it is he’s taken to bed. 

He knows he can’t forget, not again, and at the same time thinks he has to, just to stay sane. He’s managed to keep the guilt at bay all this time but now it’s back to tear at him, reminding him, supplying images of Barbara, of Jim, of Jason’s angry face.

 _Good_ , the guilt whispers. _You don’t have a right to be happy with him. You’ve chosen a monster and you have to live with the consequences._

He wishes Joker had never turned on the radio, and feels even worse for it because he recognizes it for what it is: selfishness.

He is no closer to untangling any of it by the time he gets back, and when he steps into the cottage, he half-expects Joker to be gone. 

But no. He’s still there, asleep in one of the bedrooms upstairs with all his clothes still on, and Bruce spots the vial with the sleeping pills on the nightstand next to his bed. 

Still coasting on the anger, he goes over and counts them, and then counts Joker’s regular medicine too. 

He glimpses Joker’s phone, and, sized by the same angry-hot impulse, reaches out for it, and goes as far as to activate it before he throws it back on the nightstand and stalks out of the dark room, confused and raw and disgusted with himself.

His hands are trembling when he searches the fridge and comes up with a cold bottle of beer, and then he sits in the huge unfamiliar kitchen, alone, letting the ugliness build and ebb and flow in him with every small sip. 

He should trust Joker. Joker has come so far, and he’s trying so hard. He’s still in therapy, and he’s doing it all for Bruce. The fact that they’re together here is a _victory_ , and it means that Joker won’t hurt anyone ever again. Joker cannot feel regret and Bruce has accepted that long ago, way before their arrangement ever started. He knew what he walked into, and did so willingly — it shouldn’t be any different now. 

He shouldn’t trust Joker. Joker is a monster who may be on his best behavior right now, but he’s still hurt and killed so many people, and he doesn’t feel any remorse about it at all. He still doesn’t understand that what he did was wrong. He’s _only_ doing it all for Bruce. 

Joker doesn’t understand. _He doesn’t understand. He’s only controlling himself now because Bruce is rewarding him for it_.

Bruce remembers this certainty being a comfort, and a defense. He also remembers hating Joker with this blind, white-hot hatred, and remembers not wanting to hold back a single punch so Joker would _feel_ it. 

He remembers feeling ugly, and liking it, and hating Joker for it all the more. 

It’s almost enough to make him leave, right then and there, this cold, cold twist in his chest, this cloud of anxiety in his mind, this doubt and guilt and confusion. Joker would never forgive him. He’d never forgive himself, for so many reasons. Logically, he knows that he’s reacting this badly because somewhere along the way, he’s lapsed, has let himself get complacent. 

He got swept up in playing at being normal. 

He wishes they had never left that goddamn cottage, and thinks, Isn’t that’s precisely the problem? 

_You can’t play pretend forever. Maybe that’s what he’s trying to tell you._

He gazes into the empty bottle, and then smashes it to the floor. 

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t _know_. 

He presses his face into his hands, hard, and tries to breathe. He tries to settle into the one-two-three rhythm but it only reminds him of Joker and makes the squeeze in his chest worse until it starts to seem like the kitchen is shrinking around him, the forest outside the window pushing in.

God. God. 

He rides out the worst of it like this, hunched over the kitchen table, breathing hard between his fingers and wishing, more than anything, for his city; and for his suit and the certainty that came with the weight of it hiding his body. The cowl pressing against his face. 

All of a sudden he feels naked without it, exposed, and far, far too soft. 

He’s grasping for his phone before he even realizes what he’s doing, but when his hand closes around it, he doesn’t stop until he scrolls at the right name and connects, hating himself for it even as he does. 

She doesn’t sound surprised when she answers. “Bruce?”

“Leslie,” he tries, and his breath hitches. 

She knows right away that something’s wrong, and she doesn’t waste time asking questions. 

“Go get something cold,” she tells him, worried but brisk and clear. “Ice, or a cold bottle, anything. Hold onto it tight.”

Bruce does, his free hand still shaking, and then goes to sit on the floor with his back pushing to the wall as she tells him to. He lets her guide him through a breathing exercise until he’s ready to talk, and by then, the ice in his hand and the firm support of the wall at his back help center him enough that he starts feeling embarrassed. 

“I’m sorry,” he says roughly into the phone, his voice raw. “Did I interrupt anything?”

“Only my coffee break, don’t worry about it.” She gives him another moment to settle, and is gentle when she asks, “Want to talk about it?”

“I just.” Bruce runs a hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes. They feel sore, but dry, and he wonders if that’s better or worse. “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing,” he whispers.

“Oh.” Leslie is quiet for a good long while. “That’s only to be expected,” she tells him. “I’d be worried if you didn’t have any doubts.”

“We heard about Metropolis on the radio. He laughed.”

“I see. I thought it might have been something like this.” There’s another pause, and she says, “You know this is going to keep happening, right? He doesn’t think like you. He can’t. Expecting that will only make you both suffer.” 

“I know,” Bruce murmurs, and he does. _He does_. He _knows_ Joker. 

And yet. 

“I thought, with the therapy…”

“That he’s going to change so fundamentally?”

“No. But that he might…”

“Hide it better?”

Bruce closes his eyes. “Yeah. Maybe.” 

“You do see where I’m going with this?”

“Yes.” He thinks so. He’s not sure he likes it, but is self-aware enough to know that right now he’s not receptive to any arguments, however clear-headed. Even ones that line up with what his own. “I’m… going to need to think about it.”

“Of course,” Leslie agrees, “but not tonight. Tonight I want you to take your Xanax, take a shower, maybe meditate, and then try to sleep. Write in your notebook if you can’t, but try. And then talk to him about it in the morning. I know it’s going to be difficult,” she says before Bruce can protest, “but it’s probably the right thing for both of you. It’s more than likely that his reaction to the news was deliberate and he was trying to rile you up. In that case it might be a good idea to discover why.”

She’s right. Bruce knows she’s right. 

That doesn’t make the prospect any less dreadful.

“Goodnight, Leslie,” he says, sounding a bit like himself again. “Thank you.”

“Call me again if you need to, any time,” she tells him, and the fondness in her voice helps Bruce get back on his feet. “Goodnight.”

She hangs up, and Bruce is left standing there in the empty kitchen that, at the very least, doesn’t feel claustrophobic anymore.

If anything, it’s far too vast.

God, he’s exhausted.

Then he catches a glimpse of the bottle shards, and sighs. Okay. First things first. 

He cleans up the mess, leaves his phone there in the kitchen, and then follows Leslie’s instructions: takes the pill, takes the shower. Both make him feel a little less catastrophic, a little more like his mind and body belong to him again, as do the fresh pajamas he puts on. He walks around the still, unfamiliar house, listening to the creak of his own footsteps on wood as he climbs the stairs back up to the bedrooms, and hesitates. 

He stands between the door to the room Joker chose for himself, and the empty one, its bed made and inviting.

He doesn’t move for a good five minutes. 

In the end, though, the softness wins out, and when he opens the door to Joker’s bedroom, Bruce thinks that it was never really a choice to begin with.

It’s still silent in here, and dark. As his eyes adjust to the darkness Bruce realizes that Joker never moved, in all this time.

He doesn’t bother being quiet as he moves around the bed to lie down facing Joker, over the bedding. 

His hand reaches out to cover Joker’s hand in his own, and squeeze, tight enough that if he wanted to he could break bone. 

Joker’s breath never changes. To all intents and purposes he seems dead to the world, or just — dead, with his face chalk-white and his lips parted. The longer Bruce looks at him, the colder he gets, until he brings his face in close to listen for breath. 

The relief that washes over him when he hears it settles at least one thing for him. 

He wouldn’t be able to leave even if he tried. 

 

***

 

He’s still holding Joker’s hand when, hours later, Joker stirs, and blinks up at him bleary and dazed with drugs. 

Bruce watches him without a word, and Joker doesn’t say anything either; he doesn’t move, except to angle his face up so he can see Bruce better, still blinking like it’s a struggle to keep his eyes open. 

Bruce’s grip moves to Joker’s wrist, to feel along the lines of the bracelet. 

“Mirrors,” Joker says, pointing to him and then to Bruce, just as he did back at the Manor when Bruce confronted him over Gordon. He touches the tip of his finger to Bruce’s chest. 

“Mirrors,” he repeats.

Bruce closes his eyes. His grip over Joker’s wrist goes tight. 

_Beep_ , Joker’s bracelet goes. _Beep. Beep. Beep._

Joker searches his face for a minute or so, and Bruce lets go. Joker moves to sit up and feels around for the vial. 

Bruce watches him take the meds in silence, and doesn’t move when Joker lies back down, peering at Bruce at an odd angle. 

He lets Joker reach out, and sketch a bat over Bruce’s chest with the tip of his fingernail. 

It’s not an apology — Bruce knows better than to expect one. It’s not even an explanation. But it feels like one anyway, and though the matter is far from done, Bruce is too bone-tired not to take what he can get here and now. 

He puts his arm around Joker and pulls him close, and breathes into the warmth of his skin, and when Joker’s lips rasp lightly against his, he doesn’t pull away. 

 

***

 

In the end, they never do get the chance to talk about it. 

Bruce is making late breakfast when Joker comes downstairs and puts the TV on; it defaults to CNN, and the sight makes Bruce pause with his knife midway through the tomato he’d been cutting. 

The footage is live, and it’s from Gotham.

“We have just received an official statement from Asylum director Jeremiah Arkham,” the anchor is saying, touching her earpiece. “He confirms that the escaped inmates include Gotham’s most notorious criminals, known as the Riddler, Two-Face, Clayface, The Mad Hatter, Killer Croc and Mr. Freeze. We are still receiving reports regarding the escape but we do know that fifteen asylum guards and personnel are in critical condition. The former Arkham psychiatrist Dr. Harleen Quinzel has claimed responsibility for the break-out, as the following footage confirms —”

The screen is now showing grainy night vision security cam footage of a slight woman in a jester outfit entering the asylum through a smoking hole in the wall that she must have caused; she doesn’t seem concerned about the security cameras, and blows them a kiss as she hops on down the corridor straight for the maximum security wards. 

“The escaped inmates are armed and dangerous,” the grim-faced anchor is saying. “Citizens are advised to take extra caution, and not to engage; if you happen to spot any of the inmates from the list, report it to the police immediately and keep your distance. Now, we will go live to City Hall, where Jeremiah Arkham has just finished reading out the full statement —”

Bruce’s phone is ringing where it lies on the kitchen table. 

They both look down on it, then at one another. Joker is wearing a small, unreadable smile on his face. 

“Well,” he says. “I suppose the honeymoon is over.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

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